


Pragma

by oponn



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Daddy Sandor, Drama & Romance, F/M, Fix-It of Sorts, Light Angst, Porn with Feelings, Pregnancy Kink, Rewrite, Romantic Fluff, Sandor Clegane Lives, Unplanned Pregnancy, Unresolved Romantic Tension, porn with a little plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2020-03-10
Packaged: 2020-09-28 19:42:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 33,697
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20431409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/oponn/pseuds/oponn
Summary: After the Battle of Winterfell, Sansa Stark sits in shock as the morning sun comes up. Sandor Clegane finds her in the Tower and they interact for the first time since he left King's Landing - how they feel for one another burbles forth and Sansa makes a request that could change his life.____Also known as "this is how I think it should have gone".





	1. Dawn

The sun was going to come up. 

Hints of pink and gold were trying to peek through the carpet of somber gray clouds covering the northern sky and Sansa Stark watched with resentful eyes. 

When she was younger, she imagined the days following battle to be victorious. She imagined cities and castles and keeps alive with life and the drunken celebration of victory. The silence that had befallen Winterfell after Arya stabbed the Nights King felt like it was echoing through time. 

The burgeoning day spoke of the ruthlessness of time itself; they hadn’t yet had time to fully parse together what happened before the world was moving on. Half the night had been spent traversing the castle to find people one knew and loved both dead and alive. The screams of relief had mixed equally with the soul-shaking howls of loss from discovering husbands, brothers, fathers and sons in the dead. Sansa had done her duty, holding babies while mothers grieved and herding older children to the Great Hall once it had been cleaned out for a space to sleep together. She’d coordinated hot toddies passed around and overseen the assembly of a medical wing where men were receiving what treatment was available. 

She caught Theon’s body being taken to the Hunter’s Gate to be taken outside to a general funeral pyre and had to force herself to show great restraint in her anger at the assumption. She redirected his body to the front pyres of honour – a few down from the fallen Mormonts. 

Shortly after that, Jon had found her milling about directing the beginnings of a cleanup of collapsed outer walls and she’d posited to him ceasing repairs on the Broken Tower and converting it instead to restoration resources for the outer walls. He’d spent a large portion of time secreted away in his Quarters 

After much back and forth, Jon had grabbed her hands in his and forced her to look into his dark eyes as he beseeched her, “You need to_ rest _, Sansa.” 

She’d been met with resolve in every person she appealed to and eventually, stormed off angrily when it became apparent everyone around her had decided she was no longer welcome to giving orders and supervising cleanup efforts. 

How was she to sleep when she knew she’d just hear the scraping, cracking, crumbling noise of a crypt being punched through from the inside? How was she to sleep without hearing the screams of her people over the sound of snarling and growling? How was she ever to rid her mind of the sounds of bones cracking and flesh tearing and joints and ligaments popping and snapping? 

Cersei had lost herself to madness in the face of Stannis’ invasion and his army could be killed. Sansa had been trapped in a crypt with undead enemies bleeding from walls and still felt her cowardice hiding behind a mausoleum marker would dog her steps until she joined those same Ice Kings in the same crypt. A thought that had once comforted her throughout her life now left her with a feeling of dread and a knot in her tummy. 

How was she to sleep? Arya had taken leave with Gendry conspicuously to occupy their time, the Dragon Queen and her stricken, tear-stained face had been led numbly to Jon’s chambers. Just as everyone found places to be and people to be with before the battle, they did the same after. 

Except Sansa. 

She’d closed Theon’s blue eyes with her own fingers and fed what was left of her fledgling people, who were too shocked and traumatized to see her, let alone commiserate with her. Everything she’d been before the battle was shattered and she still wore the fear that had coated her on the parapets like a cloak. She’d never seen anything like that before. 

How does one simply go to bed after surviving the most terrifying thing of their life? 

This is how she wound up here, alone in a dark tower stairwell, sitting on the stone steps next to a narrow window that looked out over the tops of the Godswood and the tundra beyond. The steps themselves were well traveled throughout history and bore a blackened slope in the middle of every ledge, a trail of maesters and masters ascending and descending throughout time. She’d spent time here as a child, hiding from Septa Mordane and her boring lessons in the one place she knew the woman would not search; in plain sight. More often than not Robb had always ratted her out. 

A tear rolled down her cheek as she imagined the old Septa’s footsteps as she climbed the tower and would find Sansa and scold her for her impudence. They were always painstaking and measured, heavy with authority. So deep in her memories was she that it wasn’t until he started to materialize out of the darkness from the stairwell below that she realized the measured stride was in fact real. 

Hastily, she tried to wipe her face and paused when she met his eyes. 

Sandor Clegane stopped a few stairs below her, watching her with a blank face she didn’t know how to read. He leaned against the wall and sighed heavily as Sansa sniffed and wiped her face. 

“Excuse me. I wasn’t expecting anyone,” She said thickly and moved closer to the wall in case he needed to pass her. He moved and when she thought him to step past her, she was surprised when instead he sat on the step beside her. 

Clegane twisted, digging in his cloak for a moment before he produced a wineskin with a satisfied grunt. He dug his thumb against the cork until it popped free and unceremoniously took a deep drag from it, swallowing loudly. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand before offering it to her. 

Sansa immediately took it. There were some habits she’d observed in King’s Landing that she’d adopted in later life and drinking wine with measured abandon was one of them. It was a sour red and almost made her wince but she knew he’d be watching out of the corner of his eyes and for some reason, didn’t want to disappoint him so she swallowed the liquid and relished in the taste. Wine hadn’t even occurred to her. 

“They don’t want me to help,” She finally told him resentfully, watching the slivers of pink bleed wider on the horizon. 

“Not that they don’t want your help. They need you rested. They need your mind,” He replied coarsely and Sansa wanted to cry. She shook her head, passing the wineskin back and putting her face in her hands and she breathed out heavily. 

“I can’t think. I can’t predict. I can’t even _ cut _ people,” She said with helpless anger and reached into her cloak to bring out her virgin dagger. The notches in the crudely hewn dragonglass glittered threateningly in the dim light. Sandor snorted as he swallowed his heavy swig and handed the skin back, plucking the dagger from her fingers as she added, “Don’t you dare say ‘stick them with the pointy end’.” 

“A crossbow is more your style,” Clegane rumbled and Sansa shook her head dismissively as she watched him toy with the dagger. Thick, calloused fingers ran trustingly along the pitted black edge as if they’d done so a million times – which they probably had, to different blades. 

“My weapon is my brain,” Sansa told him plainly. 

“Too many women use their cunt instead,” He commented as he took another drink. 

“That was presented to me as an option. It gets me in more trouble than it gets me out.” 

“Same could be said for cocks,” Sandor replied after a large swallow. She took the wineskin back and this time took not one but two long drinks from it, swallowing with a shudder. 

“I should have gone with you. The night of the Blackwater. I should have.” 

“You know what the best thing about battle is?” 

Sansa looked sideways at him, trying to assess his aversion to her statement before she sarcastically answered, “_ Killing _?” 

“You find out what you actually give a fuck about. Killings cunts is a bonus,” He told her flatly as he took a mouthful of wine while Sansa looked at him dubiously. 

“All the men who died, they found out what they care about as they died? I don’t think I buy that. I was with many of their wives and children in the crypts,” She rebuked gently but it didn’t seem to faze him at all as she took her turn with the wineskin. 

“They find out their biggest regrets. The first time I was dying was at your sister’s hands. You can bet your Noble birth that I figured out what my regrets were right there,” He told her unflinchingly as she choked down a gulp and made a face as she handed it back to him. 

“What were your regrets?” 

He snorted and tilted his head back and she watched his Adams apple bob in his throat as he chugged the wine he poured down it. When he gasped through an inhale and pressed the leather back into her hands he let out another raspy chuckle. 

“You made the right choice. I never should have been there.” 

“Why were you?” 

“I was drunk. Afraid.” 

Sansa peered at him in the eerie blue morning light and found he only met her gaze after trying to studiously look out the windows. It was closed and warned her very sternly of trying to make fun of him, which was the farthest thing from her mind. Instead, she was in awe. 

“You were afraid?” 

“If someone isn’t afraid in battle, they’re a liability.” 

“Did my song help you?”   
  
"Mayhaps. Probably not. I wasn’t there to be sung to,” He told her and she watched a hardness go into his face that spoke of self-loathing as he pulled his gaze from hers and gave the stones in front of them a nasty look. Goosebumps broke out on her skin as she processed that and stared at him, looking at him differently from how she had before. 

“Is that why you kissed me?” She asked him curiously, throwing away her training considering the conditions. As far as she was concerned, nothing existed right now in this time between the Night of Death and the Day of the Unknown. 

His head seemed to rotate like an owl’s and she found herself looking into a painting of shock. 

“What did you say?” He demanded, aghast. Sansa blinked and repeated her question as he stared at her uncomprehendingly for a few moments. Suddenly, he raked a hand over his face and took another swig from the wineskin before he thrust it at her as he shook his head. 

“What?” Sansa demanded crossly as he was shaking his head and he muttered something. She turned in her spot to face him better and said sharply, “_ Why are you shaking your head?” _

_ “ _We have never kissed,” He told her flatly and it was Sansa’s turn to stare at him. He met the gaze pointedly and nodded encouragingly as she cocked her head and narrowed her eyes. 

“You kissed me after I sang you the song.” 

“Kissing you wasn’t the intention and wouldn’t have entered my mind,” He rumbled back at her. The words soaked into her brain and her mouth fell open into a soft ‘o’ of understanding. He looked at her meaningfully, his dark grey eyes connected to her blue ones like the first time she’d found him behind her and he mocked her for her fear of him. 

“Th-that’s what I remember,” She whispered and the eyebrow he still had raised itself incredulously. Suddenly feeling completely a fool, Sansa took a long multi-swallow drain from the wineskin. It was noticeably emptier now. She’d be lying if she said didn’t feel a warmth in her chest and tingling in her fingers. 

As she handed it back to him and Clegane's fingers brushed hers in the exchange, she suddenly found herself doubting that it was just the wine that was making her warm. He grunted as he exhaled noisily and said, “Wish we had similar memories.” 

Her cheeks burned hotly with admission, something deep inside her burning bright with this sudden and unexpected gush of honesty from the scarred fighter beside her. He tipped the skin back and she coyly watched the splay of his thick fingers on the leather. It seemed unfair that so many people had died and the world was coming apart at the seams and she was still so awed by him that he could tether her to reality simply by sitting near. Any fears she felt were abated when he was close, any foes she would face wouldn’t dare approach her with him at her elbow. As usual, Sandor Clegane was rough and simple and... safe. 

He didn’t honey his tongue with lies to gain her favour or lower her guard. 

He’d long since stopped barking at her about her idiocies. 

He simply always managed to find her when she was at her lowest and always had a hard lesson for her in it. Whenever she didn’t have anything – friends, family, a clue – he found her. He turned and handed the skin back to her and his dark eyes caught hers as she looked at him. 

“What?” He rasped at her as she accepted the drink sheepishly. 

“I was just wondering if you knew. If you know – what happened,” Sansa struggled out and drowned the wince she wore with a swig of dwindling red. Sandor’s head rotated forward like a turret and she watched the muscles in his jaw on the burned side twitch and flex. Finally, he sighed and gestured for the wineskin. 

“Aye. Everyone heard about it. _ All _ of it.” 

She swallowed hard and avoided the pointed, glittering gaze from beside her as she handed it back to him. 

“When I killed him, I stayed. Until I knew he was dead. He was alive when they chewed on his ribs,” Sansa divulged, spilling one of her dearest secrets. The noise still played out in her head when she needed to remind herself – _dead, dead, dead_. 

“As your Father preached to you lot,” Sandor commented blithely and she found her own eyebrows raising in surprised agreement, face locked into a solemn mask. She thought briefly of her Father and how he would have handled an army of the undead tumbling through the walls of Winterfell. Thought of her mother and wondered – would she have fought back in the crypt? Rallied her people to their own defense? 

Her neck was flush and she felt warm and a thick, leaded feeling was flooding her limbs. She sighed dramatically and shook her head free of the cobwebs of ghosts and looked at the man beside her – burnt, bowed, unbroken. Noble to his own morals, as shifting as they may be and an absolute brute under no other name, but not unkind. Fighting for the living, fighting for the Starks, fighting for his life, her life, Arya’s life. 

“You belong here. Up here, in the cold. You’ve got the makings of a Northman,” She told him softly and he snorted, giving her a quick dismissive smirk. 

“I have my own goals,” He told her and she resisted rolling her eyes as he finished the wine in the skin off. 

“I’m sure they revolve around getting yourself killed.” 

“What’s it to you? Scarred old dog dies from a kick – how is that any concern of yours?” He challenged her without any anger, producing another wineskin from within his cloak. 

“You’re not a scarred old dog to me, mayhaps,” Sansa mused out loud and he stilled slightly beside her, his large dark eyes catching her twinkling blue ones. She felt giggly with how easily it slipped out and smiled at him with her eyes. He inhaled loudly, shook his head once and then used his teeth to uncork the skin before offering it to her. 

She found the barbarity endearing; some things about him simply would never change. 

“Were you scared out there?” She asked him almost conversationally. 

“Of course. Corpses should stay fucking corpses.” 

“I was more scared than I think I’ve ever been. I’ve never seen or heard or _ felt _...anything like that,” Sansa said and felt the sudden heat of tears. She bit her lips gently before taking a drink to distract from the shaking urge to cry. It wouldn’t do to sob openly in front of Sandor Clegane. 

He watched her and nodded to himself before saying, “Neither have I, little bird.” 

She handed him the wineskin back and her need for comfort followed it as her forehead connected with the side of his thick arms. She leaned her head on him gently and he seemed to still completely, like a child having a butterfly land on it. Sansa sighed out loud, her brain churning like a thick stew over an open fire. 

“I want you to stay,” She told him petulantly, shades of a girl much younger making a silk-slippered stomp on red stone floors. The rasping rumble of his chuckle made her frown and wrap both her hands possessively around the join of the elbow below her head. 

“I’m no good chained to a castle,” He told her amusedly after he drank and she shook her head and lifted it to look him in the eyes and found a spark there that was dancing more and more in the slowly increasing light. 

“It makes sense though, doesn’t it? Don’t you see how the Gods line things up? One of my greatest regrets wasn’t going with you on the night of the Blackwater, even though changing that might cost me where we are in this very moment. Even still, we’re still here! You and me, here, in this stairwell. On this morning, in this place in time,” Sansa urged him as she looked him deep in the eyes. Things were starting to click into place, like a stone rolling down a steep mountain and going faster and faster with sudden understanding. 

“Sansa,” Sandor said warningly, like he was trying to stop a child from touching a hot hearth stone. 

“Even though we were separated, we’re together again here. Either we should learn from what the Gods are trying to tell us – that we shouldn’t be divided, or, we should understand that either way we’re going to get lumped together again,” Sansa finished smartly and it was her turn to catch him staring at her. His face was slack, eyes searching her face for something she was unsure of. 

“You’re using religion to justify demanding I stay here with you?” He snorted as he took another drink from the wineskin and shook his head amusedly. Sansa frowned at him, offended. 

“I’m explaining to you why I think you fit. Why I believe your true place is here. Winterfell could be your home,” She told him pleadingly and he huffed another long-suffering sigh. 

“I have things left unfinished. You of all people know this,” He told her woodenly and his gaze moved back to the curved stone wall ahead of them menacingly. He put the wineskin down between them and scrubbed his great hands over his face as he exhaled noisily. 

“You’d be leaving things unfinished up here,” She needled and he stood up with an angry grunt, filling the majority of the space and darkening the stairwell as he eclipsed the thin window. 

“This was a mistake. You’ve had too much wine. You need to rest,” He told her in a clipped, hard voice. Sansa’s temper flared, slipping free of her reigns with the power of the wine thrumming through her body. She also stood, on two stairs above the one he stood upon and met his eyes evenly, the wolf in her snapping its jaws. 

"_Don’t _ treat me like Cersei,” She snarled at him and he flinted a fake smile at her. 

“Don’t act like her,” He sneered and Sansa snapped. 

Her clawed fingers sunk into the lapels of his tunic and light cloak as she yarded herself forwards and tilted her head, connecting her mouth to his. Warm hands came up, wrapping entirely around her forearms as if to pry her free before they gentled and stopped, frozen in place and effectively also holding her there. She pressed him, sliding her lips gently along his and coaxing an unsure and timid response that quickly swelled and grew bolder until he was kissing her back – the burned side of his mouth hard and warm and exactly as she remembered from Kings Landing. She drank the rush of heat from him like a starved chick and whimpered against his lips as her fingers dug deeper into the material on his chest. When she released him, she didn’t step back and instead they shared their breath as they looked at one another in shock. 

Goosebumps rose in her flesh at the shocked, haunted look on his face – as if he were seeing a ghost come alive and couldn’t believe it. Then his visage darkened and rage suffused his features. 

“How about you don’t play with things you don’t understand,” He growled at her, fingers tightening again around her arms. 

“Stop pretending I don’t understand myself,” She shot back at him breathlessly, angry that he insisted everything that might be good for him to be a cruel joke. Hurt that he would think her so callous and cruel. 

“You don’t understand this,” He warned her and it was her turn to scoff in his face. 

“Neither do you. Neither of us knows what it’s like to be _ wanted _ just for us and not _ who we are _, do we?” She challenged him angrily and got closer to his face, “There’s dragons and the undead, why is this so unnatural?” 

He made a noise of frustration as one hand left her arm to slide around the back of her neck and jerk her against him; he devoured her with relish and Sansa was along for the ride, accepting him invading her mouth and clinging to his wide shoulders with abandon. A scorching heat was building in her, like a dam had burst and she was being flooded with a more intense version of the feeling she got when she was alone and would think of him – like her body physically sang for his until it ached. She was dizzy, swimming in the feel of his lips on hers and his beard coarsely pressed against her skin and the sheer overwhelming size of him. How feeling so small suddenly felt so safe, a surreal experience against everything that she’d felt in her body before. Her hands left his chest and quested away, one to sneak around the back of his head and dip slightly down the neck of his cloak and the other sliding into the shaggy dark hair shading the burned side of his face. 

Instinctively, she pressed their lower bodies together and relished in the genuine growl that rumbled through his chest as he grasped her harder. His other hand had slid down her body and was splayed wide against her lower back, almost covering it even as he gathered what little excess material he could in his grasp. It was when her hips wiggled, an attempt to relieve the pressure, that he ripped himself away. 

Sandor took a full step back – hair mussed and eyes wild while he was breathing hard, he was a startled horse. Spooked by things she didn’t even know enough to try to guess at and she immediately despaired. 

“Sandor -,” She tried and he blanched slightly as he panted and his eyes looked anywhere but hers – her mouth, her clavicles, her hair. He ran a hand from the top of her head, down past her shoulder and dropped it from her hip with a flustered frustration. 

“I’ll think about it,” He rasped in a voice laden with lust. It took her a second to parse his meaning and in that second his head pitched forward and stole her breath with a brief, fiery kiss. 

When he pulled away again it was abrupt and final. Sandor turned around and started down the staircase without looking back. She stumbled backwards, still stunned, until her shoulder blades met the cold stone wall beside the window. 

As he descended the tower, she heard his strained and confused curse. 

“**_Fuck _ **.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual disclaimers: 
> 
> 1) Sorry for any formatting mistakes, still haven't figured out how to not have random spacing that isn't there when I edit.  
2) All spelling mistakes are mine  
3) This was originally written before the season ended and then modified so if there's discrepancies I missed, sorry y'all. 
> 
> If I made you cry with Broken In, this is my apology story. I hope if it makes you cry they are happy tears of relief because FINALLY THEY GET WHAT THEY DESERVE (but not without angst because that wouldn't be any fun). Holla if you love it and holla if you think I should just sick to delicious, delicious devastation.
> 
> ok love you bye bye


	2. Dusk

Sansa retired early from the feast. 

She assumed the drunken merriment would go on until the early hours of the morning and was getting increasingly distracted. They hadn’t spoken since the kiss in the stairwell, which was fine and grand in the way that it fueled Sansa to throw herself into organizing the feast. Her abject attention was thwarted many times – whilst organizing food transfer from the kitchens he’d walked past her to get to the training yard and hadn’t met her gaze. When she was out in the courtyard directing where livestock should be shuttled she felt eyes on her that she knew were his; when she looked she caught him averting his gaze. The remaining barrels of wine had been ordered up from the cellars and Sandor had been part of the procession of men that had appeared - of course with one barrel under each arm. Sansa had struggled not to listen when the whispers and quips from her maids had gotten a tad lewd as he set them down and left. It felt like getting thrown from a horse having to go from the open wounds of grief to the clamped anxiety of attraction and she was swinging from that branch like a thief from a tree – comforting people who’d lost everything and still assisting in various cleanup efforts. 

During the feast she did her best not to be distracted by him but found it a fraught task; his mere entry into the main hall had taken her gaze from the person to whom she was speaking immediately. She drank goblet after goblet as she watched him talk and eat with the others at his table with an intimate comradery that was distinctly lacking at the Lord’s table. This feast was supposed to be one of celebration and merriment and Sansa did her best to let herself enjoy it. She found either she let her eyes occasionally feast on him or her mind feast on the images of the dead. As the night wore on, the Dragon Queen had made her declarations and appointments; the validation of Gendry Baratheon set Sansa’s teeth on edge along with the borderline mutinous smile the other woman bore. As the wine poured more freely and tongues wagged with increasing exaggeration, the blond Queen had gotten noticeably frostier and Sansa had grown increasingly uneasy. 

As the meal ended the people began to shift and new groups and socializing bands moved between tables, Sansa drank heavily. More than a few women had approached the table and one had even openly solicited Sandor – body language like that Sansa could read across a court. The satisfaction that Clegane had proved to be a sullen dog and snapped at her for her impudence was fleeting as more women were working up the courage to drunkenly audition for his attentions. She’d politely begged pardon from the glaring and tightlipped Queen and abandoned her wine to leave the hall as primly as she could, stopping in two or three places to respond to people and thank them for their presence. 

It was only when she was safely starting to climb the stairs to the Lord’s tower that the gentle smile dropped off her face and her brow gathered just like her skirts as she lifted them and stomped up the steps. Anger shivered through her chest and her footsteps grew more pointed and violent one at a time. She wrenched open the door to her chambers and was satisfied when she slammed it shut for the first time since girlhood. No one else in the Tower at that moment to hear it anyway. 

Inside, she paced with the rage of a pot about to boil over. 

_ Think about it. _

What was there to think about? Either he wanted war or he didn’t. He wanted a purpose or he didn’t. He wanted a home or he didn’t. He wanted to belong or he didn’t. He wanted to prove himself a better man or he didn’t. 

Sansa threw herself down in the chair in front of the fire after shrugging out of her cloak. She wore a simple deep green frock, patterned with black and gold threads forming fine vines of leaves and jumping fish. She’d tried colour to celebrate the victory and now felt like a small child wearing her mother’s dress. Tears welled in her eyes and she pressed the knuckles of her right hand to her lips to stifle the urge to cry about the unfairness of it all. 

Either he wanted her or he didn’t. 

Sansa slammed her head back into the chair and looked at the ceiling with anger. She had better things to think about and obsess over and yet, she was scattered and confused like a maid who wasn’t sure if she’d just been kissed or not. If she wasn’t feeling like a leaf shaking loose from a tree she was focused on the gross fog of grief coating the walls and felt like she may lay down and drown in it. 

“I have more pressing concerns,” She said aloud, as if the verbal affirmation would stop the fear pervading her mind. She sighed soon after as she discovered it didn’t. She wanted to turn it all off, not think about anything any further and had scraped herself up from the chair when there was three strong knocks on the door. 

She froze for a moment, staring at it. A thrill rushed through her before she clamped down on it – it could just as easily be Jon. She moved to the door on light feet and unbarred it, opening it noisily a few inches. 

Sandor’s face was a storm of conflict but she could see how brightly his eyes shone in the dark and something swooped in her stomach. Wordlessly, she stepped back and allowed him entry. 

He moved into the room, a wary eye taking in the happy dancing fire and her messy writing desk and neatly made bed. He stopped near the chairs guarding the fire and she watched his fists clenched and unclench nervously as he turned to face her after she shut the door. 

Sansa wrapped her arms around her middle, already unhappy with his answer based on his stance. She arranged her face into one of unbreakable aloofness, as if it would soften the blow. 

“I have to go with them,” Sandor declared and Sansa’s shoulders sagged in despair anyways. She sighed audibly and angled her body, indicating wordlessly towards the door before walking past him towards her bed. 

“What if I promise -,” He started suddenly and then stopped, looking angry with himself. Sansa paused and turned to him to look at him with suspicious curiosity. Sandor glared at the floor as if he was sorting through various arguments before he took a laborous breath and said, “What if I promise not to go after Gregor?” 

A silence pulsed between them – Sansa surprised and considering and Sandor tense and earnest. 

“Why go with them then?” She finally asked him sharply. Sharper than she intended but he didn’t seem to notice as he inclined his head in agreement. 

“If what you said is true – I belong here, I’m a Northman. I can’t stay by your side where it’s safe and let the rest of them go fight in Kings Landing. Not when I know that place like I know my cock,” He told her roughly and Sansa’s cheeks pinked at his casual vulgarity. He almost took a step toward her and stopped, raking his paws over his face again at her silence. 

“I can’t call these people my brethren and call this my home if I’ve not defended it.” 

“You have already,” She told him tightly. 

“It’s not the same!” He rasped angrily, the declaration filling the room momentarily and Sansa swallowed thickly. She crossed and uncrossed her arms nervously before approaching him, looking up into his face cautiously. He was so tense he was like a wounded animal, capable of biting for any reason and the raging emotions on his face told her he was losing the battle with the storm. 

She considered – this was the best option. Sandor was right and even if he did stay here, if their relationship was ever discovered it would not only destroy him, it would devalue her. She would never be trusted if she favoured not only a Westerman but also one who wouldn’t ride for his lords. Sandor would never be welcomed if he stayed behind like a maiden. He’d survived many battles, including the battle with the undead and if he wasn’t to go after the monster that used to be the Mountain his odds of returning were all but guaranteed, in her opinion. She bit her lower lip as she realized that it was take what she was being given or risk losing him forever. She couldn’t force his hand and she felt a rush of respect towards him as she looked over his sad but angry face. 

“You won’t go away when you come back?” She asked him shakily and he looked back at her with a tenderness she’d never seen on his face before. Her heart thumped loudly in her chest in response. 

“Only if you do,” He rasped carefully. 

Her cheeks heated and she couldn’t help the smile that bled onto her face as she blinked her vision clear and reached up to cup his jaw with both hands – touching the waxy pits of his burns and threading her digits through the bristly hair of his beard. 

“Then you’re right, you should go with them,” She whispered as she lifted her face to his and accepted the kiss that he rushed to give her. This time their meeting was gentle and tender – her hand slipped against his neck and the other fell to his chest. He kissed through a shaky inhale before drawing his face back to look into hers. 

“If this is a jape I’ll kill you for it,” He told her seriously and Sansa couldn’t help but smother a laugh, catching his sour face and pressing it down further. 

“If this was a jape I’d deserve it,” She declared to him and he grunted his agreement as she cocked her head at him, her own insecurity getting the best of her. 

“What made you decide to stay?” She asked him gently and didn’t shy away from the searching look he gave her. She clenched her fingers gently in his beard, a soft tug that earned her a strangled sigh and his face pressed deeper into her palm. 

“A demanding, needy little bird,” He groused with a slight smirk at the faked dirty look she gave him as she stroked up his jawline. He sniffed and divulged, “You were right about purpose or whatever. I’ve come too far to just go back to hating some fucker who already died. To give up... whatever the fucking hells this is.” 

He looked distinctly uncomfortable admitting to her that there was a _ this _ between them. 

“Sandor, have you been married?” 

“You know I’ve not,” He snorted derisively. 

“Have you courted a woman?” 

“No,” came the reply, reluctant and resentful at once. 

“Have you had a partner?” 

“What next? Am I fucking virgin? Seven hells,” He cursed as he went to pull away but Sansa dug her fingers into the fabric on his arms and resisted even as she was yanked forwards two steps in his effort to twist away from the conversation. 

“Please, not everything is to hurt you. I’m trying to _ explain _ to you,” She all but pleaded with him as she held fast and looked into the fires of hatred on his face and realized it wasn’t directed at her. Self-hatred painted a war of disgust on his face and her heart broke for him as she breathed, “ _ please.” _

“Fucking what then?” He snapped. 

“You’re obviously not a virgin. Brothels, then? Grateful women?” 

The ire on his face deepened and he regarded her with the hospitality of an incoming thunderstorm. Sansa licked her lips nervously and watched his eyes follow the motion despite himself. She searched through her thoughts at his silent omission and gathered herself. 

“You’ve...you’ve had to find people to...to..,” She searched and felt her neck get hot as the words struggled to leave her mouth. 

“Fuck,” He supplied dispassionately and crossed his arms over his chest, shedding her hands. 

“Yes. No one who wanted to...do that without a favour or...payment,” She filled in hesitantly for him and he didn’t correct her. Instead, he turned to leave. 

“It’s the _ same for me _ !” Sansa exclaimed in a thin voice as he turned his back on her and her words stopped him and emboldened her, “I don’t know...I don’t know how to not just be...fucked. I’m to be married and bred like some sick mare . Because of my family, because of my name, because of my mother. I don’t know what to do with... _ this. _" 

The fire snapped and crackled as he slowly turned around and regarded her and the nervous pain on her face. She was almost shaking with the effort of not running from the room and sewing her lips shut for eternity. It wasn’t an excruciating silence for just him and she searched for a final statement before settling on her deepest defeat. 

“I don’t know how to do this either,” She finally added in a small voice. It was the thinnest her shields had been and the most honest she’d felt since her father looked upon her in his quarters in King’s Landing. He finally heaved a big sigh and moved his massive shoulders up and down. 

“I’m a hound. I do what like and if that’s not to your ladylike sensibilities then you’re fucked,” He told her almost reluctantly and with a fair amount of exasperation. Sansa couldn’t help the timid smile that climbed onto her lips. 

Sandor seemed to be concentrating as he loitered near the chairs before he cursed under his breath and his hands rose and unclasped his cloak, which was thrown over the back of the chair. Militantly, like he was undressing to bathe in a stream, he yanked off his boots and cast her a quick wry look before he reached behind his own neck and yanked his tunic up over his shoulders. Sansa’s breath left her lungs as the fabric slipped upwards and revealed his thick body – pads of muscle and endless shards of scars that told many tales of violence and death. He was surprisingly long and wide and his hips formed a cinch point against how wide his shoulders were. A hash of long muscles that ran down from his back and shoulders flexed along his ribs as he tossed the shirt down and faced her grumpily. He was barrel-chested and portions of his skin hid under swathes of black hair. 

He was looking at her almost angrily, like she was a child who insisted upon seeing something they knew they were too young to see as soon as they saw it. As if he’d warned her of something horrible and was presenting it to her anyway. 

Sansa had seen many men shirtless – she'd lived and watched training and tourneys in the South and most of the men trained and worked without a shirt or tunic. They’d all been similar with finer differences between their skin colours and muscle groups and oddly, bellybuttons. None of their bodies compared to Sandor‘s – in fact, they paled in comparison to appear almost boyish. He was built like a castle himself. He loosened the ties of his britches and the tops peeled back to reveal more skin now shadowed by darker hair. When she raised her eyes she found he was regarding her with dubiousness written on his face and she flushed as she realized how feral she probably looked inspecting him so. 

It was when his own eyes dropped questioningly over her body that she realized. 

She was waiting for him to demand she undress. An insidious voice almost sounded in her ear, whispering to her but Sansa shook him off with a sharp inhale. Her hand lifted and rose behind her head. Sansa gathered her hair and pulled it over her right shoulder and with a meaningful look at Sandor, slowly turned around. She exposed the back of her dress to him and waited with trembling hands clamped around her mane. Her eyes found the long dressings on her bed – rich greys and shimmering whites. Her bed itself was made with white sheets and a deep, forest green blanket that was overlayed by thick furs. 

Both of her lips disappeared between her teeth briefly as she heard as much as felt him approach her from behind. She knew where his hands were before they touched the quickly cooling skin of her back due to the heat blazing off them. She expected him to balk and curse at the long line of tiny loop buttons but after he fiddled with the first couple, he undid them with the gentle precision of some of her maids. 

He followed the buttons down the curve of her spine with his knuckles brushing her back through the silk of her shift and making her skin tighten and raise – her nipples pinched as if she’d risen from the water of the hot springs outside. Her breasts weren’t even bare. He made quick progress and her gown loosened to almost fall free if it weren’t for her arms clamped over the front of the bodice. When he finished, she turned her head to look at him over her shoulder as she released her hair and the dress fell thickly around her ankles. Her cheeks were rosy and his eyes were glowing like heated coals. They looked at one another questioningly while his hands gently returned to her back and soaked over the fabric there. They slid around her waist and bracketed her belly and ribs and he took a step closer behind her until she could feel the heat of his bare chest through the shift. 

She involuntarily stiffened, expecting a great hand in between her shoulders and for herself to be suddenly shoved forwards, her face to be jammed brutally into something designed for comfort. To have the bell of her hips held down as she was taken from behind so she couldn’t writhe and crawl away. 

She looked forward and squeezed her eyes shut as his arms wrapped further around her and she felt herself being pulled backwards against his chest. He seemed to hold her there, against him and she felt him duck his head and was briefly confused before she felt his lips on the place where her neck joined her shoulder. It was so light and warm and gentle it felt like he’d dusted sparks across her skin and the ember of arousal in her lower belly lit to a flame. Without meaning to, Sansa moaned and her eyes sprung open in surprise. 

Sandor’s answer was a deep, distracted rumble that shivered against her back and made an instant home in her memory. His hands activated and roamed without grabbing, tracing the shape of her hips, her belly, her thighs, wrapping gently around her arms like a cuff and running up and down them. Sansa could barely keep track of his ventures because she was so overwhelmed with the feeling of his lips returning to her neck and kissing further – down the slope and out over the edge of shoulder, up the very back of her neck against her spine. It was when he buried his nose in her hair and openly hummed like a contented dog that she smiled. 

He used one hand to move her tresses and expose the other side of her neck. He began the same ministrations there and Sansa keened as she pressed herself backwards against him and moved her head to give him more access. It got her a long lick from her shoulder up to just beneath her ear that he then sealed into a gentle suck that had her body somehow instantly electric with want. Her breath coming in short pants and other areas of her body now demanding touch, she snared the hand he had sliding up her abdomen and applied it to her right breast. His predatory growl was muffled and she whined slightly as he relished a squeeze and then she watched his fingers ghost over the shift to tease her nipple. The shock of how good that felt made her jerk her hips backwards instinctively, pressing the swell of her bottom into the very obvious erection pressing into the small of her back. 

He let out a grunt and Sansa cried out in surprised pleasure as his teeth gently clamped onto the skin on the back of her neck in mimicry of a crushing bite. When he released her, she turned on the spot to look up at him with wide eyes. His eyes were wild and heavily lidded and he was looking down on her like he would eat her. Sansa stooped to the side slightly and grasped the hem of her shift and awkwardly pulled it up over her head, managing to muss all her hair into her eyes as she did so. She missed the look on his face but heard a strangled rasp from him as her breasts came into view and he was quick to brush her hair from her eyes as she dropped it to the floor. 

His face had closed and there was a sharp intensity there that she only saw when he was paying rapt attention and focus. The only other time she’d seen it was when he was fighting. Some of her bones strengthened as she realized she commanded every shred of his attention, even as she felt so timid and overwhelmed she may as well topple over. She refused to show weakness in case he thought it was fear of him so she pressed on by turning around and moving onto the bed. 

Without really knowing any other reference, she moved to get on her knees with her back to him. 

“No,” He said suddenly, fiercely, and she froze. He looked contrite when he saw her worried glance and she watched his fists clench and unclench. He looked distinctly uncomfortable for a moment before he explained, “I won’t have you like a whore.” 

Sansa sat, tucking her legs beside her and moved to the head of the bed until her back pressed against the pillows. She realized not only did she not know how whores were bedded but also that she’d been bedded like one so often she didn’t know any other way. She tried not to feel a belated, deeper shame that Ramsay had obviously tried to impress upon her earlier and met his eyes as she slowly laid back. 

“Is it okay like this? It...this will work?” She asked him softly as she straightened her legs. His eyes slid closed at her words and he used a hand to squeeze the bulge at the front of his britches with a soft groan. She must have looked confused because he suddenly rasped a chuckle. 

“It’ll do more than work,” He whispered with a tint of strain in his voice as he pushed the fabric around his hips down. Sansa lifted her head slightly to get a look at him, backlit by fire. As a big man, she wasn’t sure what to expect of his aforementioned cock and found it pleasantly suited him – it was large enough to give her pause, as was he, but it was also possibly the least ugly looking one she’d seen. It curved slightly and appeared too heavy to stand completely outwards. He turned his head and caught her looking and managed to look slightly sheepish. 

“Been told its not as bad as it looks,” He muttered and Sansa’s eyebrows quirked slightly, eyes still focused on his groin as he turned and kneeled on the end of the bed. The straw mattress dipped with his weight and she put her feet flat to stabilize. His eyes dropped between her slightly parted thighs and her cheeks and chest flushed hotly when he groaned out loud. 

She moved to close her knees and his hand shot out like lightning, the flat of it buffering the divide and keeping them apart. Gently, his fingers relaxed and cupped the top of one knee as he met her eyes directly. 

“Dog,” He reminded her bluntly as he all but brushed her legs wide open and Sansa tried to whine his name in an effort to close them. Unceremoniously, he swooped forwards and his head disappeared in between her thighs, settling his chest on the bed. Sansa all but squealed and tried to back up against the bedframe but his arms snaked around the seat of her hips and yarded her against his face. She propped herself into a quasi-sitting position and moaned aloud in surprise. The sensation of his tongue delving through her lips with wide, lapping relish rolled through her. He managed to somehow find and suck on a bundle of nerves that made her leg spasm over his shoulder as Sansa gasped harshly and bucked against his face. His answer was a half-growl half-chuckle that reverberated through her core as he worked her and Sansa became increasingly unwound. She couldn’t necessarily figure out what he was doing at any given moment and drowned in the sensations he dragged out, even moaning and grinding down slightly with her hips when he probed her deeply with a finger. 

It was when he finally found a process that made her groan and take two of his large digits with greed that she felt a pressure building inside her abdomen, crawling up her back. Sparks – colours and whiteness at the same time, building up under her skin like the stars winking off the top of a dark lake. It took time and it steadily built as he seemed to press her deeper into the feelings by repeating the same magic over and over and hitting the same pangs of pleasure again and again. Her fingers buried deeply in his hair and it was that her talons clenched around as she felt like she was dropped off a parapet. 

Her teeth clenched and she keened as she ground herself wantonly on his smile, eventually falling back and gasping for air as her brain fizzed and a ringing sounded in her ears. 

Before she knew it, his arms were wrapping around her hips again and she was being dragged across the bed as he loomed over her. 

“Beautiful little bird with your tasty little cunt,” He rasped raggedly as he looked down between them and gasped, “This won’t be long.” 

She whimpered breathlessly as she felt his fingers slide knowingly through her sex and the thicker press of the head of his erection. His arms somehow snaked up the length of her body, snaring her thighs and winding around to her support her back. Sansa squeaked as she was comfortably folded in half with the backs of her thighs against his stomach. Sandor stood and they both moaned as the sensation of being lifted in the air against him as well as their bodies merging completely seared through Sansa’s mind. She was surprised at how easy it was – this fullness and press of a man inside her was normally accompanied by burning and ripping, like the split skin on a roast chicken. 

Sandor filled her thickly and gently and instead of pain and fire, she felt a deep urge to rock and stir him within her. She let out a stuttered, frustrated moan and circled her hips in confusion. 

“Fuck - right to a gallop,” He grunted and she groaned as he began to move. He fucked up into her with a pattern that spoke of frenzy and passion. He greedily filled her just as she stared into his eyes and they both moved together and shared the same desperate delirium. Sansa’s hands tangled in both his hair and his beard as she held onto him and he supported her rear to suit him and his pounding pleasure best. It wasn’t the sharp pleasure of his mouth between her legs, but a deeper carnal need burned bright and that was all she breathed for as she watched him approach his own peak. 

Impulsively, Sansa kissed him and whimpered against his lips as he froze and all his movements stilled, cock seated as deep as it could comfortably go without her crying out. The world tilted and she clung harder to him as they gently crashed into the surface of the bed like a carriage careening into the muck. Sansa was safely tucked under him and fused at the mouth. As soon as he got his arms out from under her, one hand gripped her hip and the other smoothed over her forehead as he snapped his hips in the cradle of hers with a sudden violent speed. 

It sounded like a horse on cobblestone for a brief moment and Sandor kissed her almost harshly before he finally seized. She felt a series of smaller jerks in his muscles on his back, rippling under her circling fingertips as he emptied himself inside her. He growled with every breath and finally released her lips so they could both pant for air and Sansa could trail her fingers down the burned side of his face. He stared down into her eyes with his inky black ones and seemed to be trying to memorize every moment, like he was in disbelief. 

Sansa herself could barely keep her eyes open. A deep-seated satiation was settling through her body; she either slept or she would give in to a sudden need for bread and perhaps jelly. She felt as if she’d been running through an ice storm and was finally warm beside a fire. 

She giggled to herself as Sandor pulled her against him chest and angled them so they were facing the right way in the bed. Unceremoniously, he yanked the blankets and furs over them. One of his great paws snaked against her chest and found a breast, gently rolling the nipple and rumbling his approval in his chest when she whined weakly at him. 

“What do you get when you mix dogs with wolves?” Sansa finally asked him with a wry smile. 

“Coyotes,” Sandor answered seriously and she giggled. 

“I was going to say happiness. I should hope you’ll remember this,” Sansa joked sleepily and jerked with a sharp cry when as mystery pinch came to her rear. He chuckled in her ear and rasped, “Cheek.” 

She rolled in his arms, throwing a leg halfway across his waist and settling her head against his chest. He stiffened for a brief moment as she settled and then his arms descended gently to secure her to his chest like a precious gift. 

“Thank you,” Sansa told him dreamily. 

“Thanking the dog for sniffing your cunt,” He all but laughed and bobbed her head slightly around as she lightly smacked his chest. 

“Thank you for not hurting me,” She shot back at him and his laughter died away immediately. A large hand lifted to her head and she felt fingers slide reverently over her hair. His other hand seemed to hold her closer to him as he inhaled loudly. 

“I’d never hurt you little bird,” He told her seriously. Sansa nodded as she stroked the thick black hair on his chest. 

“I know.” 

Falling asleep with him was a thousand times easier than it was waking up to discover that he’d gone. Her only comfort was that she had his promise. His only vow was to her. 

Sansa Stark’s only vassal was the Hound. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi. 
> 
> a) don't come for me with how many conjunctions there are. i'm doing my best.  
b) i've detailed various types of scars and everything on sansa so many times before i'm sticking with just emotional scars this time because i get bored  
c) normally i write sansa with a fair amount of self-hate so this time i'm giving some to sandor  
d) please see the tags that indicate a small amount of plot. plot is a loose suggestion in this story.  
d) in my mind Brienne is only her sworn shield due to her commitment to Cat sooooo 
> 
> yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay! they did the sex!


	3. Lost

It was easy to track the troupe over the days since they’d fled King’s Landing. 

He’d caught their trail while that great bloody dragon was still tearing chunks off the Red Keep and had been a shadow on their heels since. Two men, one woman. He needed them to let their guard down, even for a moment, as the days ticked by and he realized he was on a schedule. This impulsive side quest was proving to be more expansive than he’d thought it would be. 

Once the second man died, it became easier. 

A quick once over of the body indicated the portly man had died of a festering gut wound – one so bad it assaulted the olfactory senses as soon as the corpse was rolled over. He must have had it from the beginning of the siege and had been nursing it in the following days, fleeing for his life as the gash leaked pus and sepsis into his body. 

The remaining guard, however loyal to his eventual end, wasn’t the sharpest. They’d taken the  Goldroad and beelined it West as if they’d wanted to get caught. They were on one horse and on the sixth day as the sun fled, stopped to make a terrible ramshackle camp for the Lady. 

Night fell like the cloak of the Stranger on a captive’s face, long shadows of velvety blackness that cloaked his form and shrouded his approach. The snows that had once been thin and crunchy had grown dry and powdery as they settled at the foot of the  Silverock pass. 

They’d made stay away from the  treeline to give themselves a sense of perimeter but it simply made him bide his time amongst the roots, waiting for them to eventually retire to their half-collapsed abode. The fire had reduced itself to the glowing embers when he left his spot, creeping through the frigid brush with a knife in his hand. His eyes had adjusted with the darkness and the shades of the tent were almost perceptible as he opened the flap. The man had even taken his boots off; it made grabbing his ankle and yarding him out of the tent on his back seamless. The woman screamed as her companion’s startled yell was cut short by the thud of a blade in flesh and a wet gurgle. His massive figure stood from its kill. 

“You! I should have known it would be you,” The woman spat at him, voice trembling with fearful rage and laden with betrayal. Perhaps even hatred. He grabbed her ankle too and yarded her from what now amounted to a sack as she emitted an undignified shriek. 

“Aye,” He growled at her face in the blackness, “you should have.” 

X

Podrick had a habit of stopping exactly where King Bran needed to be. 

Much of the debris had been cleared but there were boulders large and small everywhere. There was enough vaporized rock that the air of King’s Landing was still hazy, still smelled of ash and blood. The sprawling courtyards surrounding the Red Keep had been a high priority for clearing; perhaps more for the new King’s mobility than general morale. 

The King was keen on observing many of the bodies recovered – strange preferences for which smallfolk he saw versus which nobility was the least of the new Court’s concerns, as his cryptic answers to their questions taught them to know better than to ask. 

As such, he was notified immediately when the area was cleared and the bodies were discovered. When the tromping of guards and distinct constant rolling gait indicated the King’s arrival, it appeared all work had respectfully stopped out of deference for his inspection. 

Looking upon the mess, Bran Stark knew better.

Everyone had stopped to stare at one of the most resounding sights from the fall of the Lannister Reign – the half stripped, mostly charred, purpled body of the Mountain that Rides, Gregor Clegane. Laying on top of him, facedown with back of his leather  armor heavily charred was the ashy blond body of the Kingslayer. 

Jamie Lannister. 

Rocks and fallen beams had piled atop them, mostly smothering the flames that had obviously savaged the bodies. A simple glance up indicated they’d fallen – from exactly where wasn’t clear from the gaping holes in the sides of the towers but it was all higher than the birds flew. 

Small, rushing footsteps sounded and a young woman with a long face suddenly appeared – Bran recognized her from the penitent House Cerwyn in the North. He lifted his hand and indicated to Ser Podrick, who immediately turned him and rolled him towards her and the path back towards the Keep from which she’d come. 

Bran’s fingers closed slightly in the air and they slowed as he gazed up at the brunette, who owlishly stared at the bodies before tearing her eyes away at his attentions. She stumbled into a curtsey. 

“Your Grace, my apologies,” She stammered and he saw her cast her eyes once more to the men on the ground, despite her formalities. 

“Tell her it’s not over yet,” Bran told her plainly and opened his fingers lightly again to cue Podrick. They moved past the flushed girl with the strained procession of a Kingly retinue. Bran knew of his sister’s unending weeklong search, using every resource available with as few details as possible, to find the younger Clegane. 

“Your Grace?” She asked with confusion but he didn’t indicate to turn around and they kept going without responding to her confusion. 

They continued at a dedicated pace, away from the gaggle of hushed people reverently overseeing the remains of famed names. The wheels of his chair turned as endlessly as his mind, grinding over fine rock dust and popping and crunching shards of stone and scorched bone. Birds had started to come back, singing in the crispy black branches of courtyard trees and darting from crumbling balconies to decimated walls. The fires in the city had long since been put out but more buildings rotted to collapse with every passing day, despite the cleanup and reinforcement efforts. 

The young King’s thoughts turned to the countryside and the large swaths of land that needed guardianship or retitlement. The dead men on the ground behind him left lands with roughly 200 dependent households, if he remembered correctly. 

Sharp, marching footsteps sounded and he tilted his head as she came into view ahead of them. Normally reserved and traditional, his sister was unaccompanied and walked with the determination of their Mother when she was about to take one of her fully grown sons to task. The expression on her face was that of ice; her lips were not pursed, but were drawn flat. Her eyes were insolent and steely and her forehead was pulled together enough a fine line appeared between her brows. With her head tilted down as she walked, Sansa Stark looked sinister as she marched to investigate one of her last leads. 

When she approached her eyes were locked forward and she didn’t indicate towards him at all even as he turned his face towards her in greeting. As she stalked past, he noted the faint halo of sunlight, as if from a sun that still struggled to reach through the clouds over King’s Landing and Bran found a wan smile lifting his mouth. Suddenly, he understood. 

If Ser Podrick was curious as to why not only did Queen Sansa not bow and greet the King but why neither sibling spoke to one another he did not indicate it. Instead, he continued pushing the King towards the doors that would lead to the Small Council. 

It was a winding trek, to avoid the stairs, and they paused outside the doors to be properly announced. As he heard his heralding announced inside, there was a loud cry of frustration from the courtyard below and a group of alarmed birds took to the sky, chittering noisily. 

“Podrick,” King Bran said conversationally as the other man looked behind them with alarm, paused in his motion of shouldering open the heavy doors. 

“Yes, Your Grace?” 

“Take the Clegane Keep off the  titlement list, I think,” He told him with a slight lilt to his voice, something brighter and light.  Podrick paused and blinked at the  abrupt change before he nodded outwardly.

“Right away, Your Grace.”

X

It was well past the midnight hour when the tears finally stopped. 

The Red Keep was a silent and stoic as ever and the sound of the waves beating against the cliff leagues below her half-ruined balcony had muffled any sobs that escaped the sodden black fabric Sansa had been holding against her mouth. 

It had happened mere hours after she’d watched Jon set sail. She’d been in the lower levels with some maids, sorting through the crates of precious fineries and silks that had been stored in some of the unruined lower chambers of the castle. It was a large, cavernous room with vaulted ceilings and lined with small slat-like windows through which dusty gold light poured. Sansa and one of her maids had pried open a crate that she had narrowed down as belonging to her friend, Queen Margaery Tyrell. 

Sansa had smoothed her hands over the thick, velvety and finely printed material of Margaery’s wedding gown to Joffrey and felt the glow of triumph and righteousness in her belly. It was when she’d finished delegating instructions as to which crates they were taking North when the door opened and everyone bowed immediately. 

Instinctively, Sansa turned and dropped a curtsey when she saw her brother at the top of the stairs that descended into the chamber. 

“Your Grace, I believe I’ve found what I need,” She called to him just as Arya slipped past him and started down the stairs. Sansa’s gladdened smile started to freeze as she looked up at her brother, who gazed down at her with a type of regretful resolution she didn’t recognize. Her eyes went to Arya, who was now walking towards her with a stoic, solemn face. 

Arya approached her and stopped short, considering for a moment.    
  
“We’ve looked throughout the castle and the majority of King’s Landing. We can’t find him. He’s not here,” Arya said woodenly and Sansa saw the sad resentment on her sister’s face before it was gone, drained away with the rest of the emotions she didn’t display. It was the pronouncement that Sansa had slowly been coming to fear most. 

She would almost feel better if she were to find a body amidst the ruins but this absence of any indication he’d been here, let alone lived through the bombardment, was almost worse. Where was he? What happened to him? Why hadn’t he reached out? Where could he have gone? Why? Why? Why?

“The keep will be put under stewardship,” Bran announced from above them and Sansa glanced at him and nodded numbly, not fully processing his words. She inhaled shakily and blinked forcefully as she stared upwards at the ceiling, fighting back the burning in her eyes. 

Sansa finally looked to Arya, sniffing boldly as she nodded. 

“Thank you.” 

“If I find anything before you leave, you’ll be the first to know.” 

“That’s all I need, thank-you,” Sansa cut her off in a tight, controlled voice. Ser Podrick wheeled the King from the room and when the metal door to the chamber boomed shut behind them the maids began to haltingly scamper around and proceed as before. None of them would look Sansa in the face and no one dared ask about whom they were speaking of. 

More than one noble had been told of the death of family or friends in the wake of the Dragon Queen’s siege and it was becoming unpleasantly common how often revelations such as this were witnessed. 

Arya had held Sansa’s eyes for a moment before she murmured, “I’m sorry, Sansa.” 

At this a fat tear escaped and rolled down her cheek, falling free of her chin to darken the stone floor and she sniffed loudly and nodded once. Awkwardly, she turned and indicated for the maids to proceed with their instructions. By the time she’d turned back around, Arya had vanished and with a sigh and a trembling chin, Sansa decided she needed to finally allow herself time away. 

She’d left the storage caverns and walked numbly like a stunned deer until she found herself outside of her old chambers from her stay with the Lannisters. She opened the door and found the room half asunder – the stripped bed was covered in chunks of red stone and fine dust. There were larger hunks of railing and the wall that led onto the balcony gaped out at the open ocean. Half the balcony was destroyed and the debris from the blow had destroyed the wooden vanity in the far corner. She let the heavy door swing shut behind her and trailed through the dust and broken things until she stepped out onto the balcony and set herself down on the stone seat, looking at the horrifying drop down the tower onto the wet, craggy rocks below. 

Once reasonably confident she was alone, she fell apart. 

There was a trick she’d been given as a child, prone to her temper tantrums as she was that came out anytime she felt she couldn’t keep it in anymore. Anytime the pain became too much, the memories too real, the loss too raw she still went back to the old habit; Sansa withdrew a gather of black fabric from the pocket of her waist skirt and mechanically balled it up. She took a deep, shaky breath and with tears gushing from her eyes held the fabric against her mouth with both hands. There was a beat of silence before she screamed, as loud and as violently and as shrilly as she could. 

Before the last one ended, she inhaled as much as she could through her nose and began again. Scream after scream after scream, she felt her throat tearing and her vocal  cords vibrating and her chest burning. Eventually, the screams turned into full-body racking sobs. All but mad with grief, she rocked herself back and forth with her arms wrapped around her torso, as she’d often done when thrown in her chambers after Ramsay. 

She couldn’t see, the world a blurry cacophony of colours. She couldn’t hear anything but the roar of her still very alive heart pulsing in her ears. She couldn’t feel anything but the pain of the hole of utter darkness that had opened up in the center of her chest and was threatening to suck the entirety of King’s Landing into it in a gale of despair. 

The sobbing was interrupted by hysterics and hyperventilation as she spiraled out of control and her screams turned silent, her mouth open as she tried helplessly to suck in  the air that didn’t gurgle out of her throat as soon as she had it. 

She’d been resisting the thought but there was no other understanding. Where else would he go? He’d simply made a promise not to go after the person who could destroy him and somehow this had made things worse. The Gods spit in her face constantly and Sansa refused to nurse thoughts of Sandor boarding a ship for Essos or returning to some warm small house with a plump wife with wide hips and three fat, dark haired children. If he wasn’t here, where was he? They would have come across him returning on the road if he’d turned to go back to Winterfell, no bands or groups of bandits would be able to hold him let alone inclined to. She selfishly felt there were very few things that could keep Sandor from her and that meant death. It would mean he was dead.

Dead. 

_ Dead. _

** Dead. **

The word beat through her skull just as his face flashed behind her eyes – angry and uncomfortable, angry and bloodthirsty, angry and accusing, angry and hurt, angry and sad, sad and mournful, sad and regretful, sad and hateful, sad and lustful. She saw his face contorted in battle and in ecstasy, indifferent and enraptured. Dark, long hair. Wide, overbearing shoulders. 

Dead. 

He must be. 

She was outraged he went through with his plan; what of his promise to her? What of what they’d shared together? 

It had long since occurred to her that without him, she was well and truly alone even as she got everything that she wanted. She achieved the dreams of her ancestors and her countryman for centuries before her and the North was now truly free. Except, what little family she had that wasn’t dead was exiled to the Wall, adventuring to the borders of the world or had been turned into riddle-talking  greenseer that was now King of the Six Kingdoms. 

She’d been given the world and she was totally, completely lost in it. 

Lonely horror welled up in her chest again and Sansa’s head spun as she struggled to breathe. She didn’t know if she was never going to see him or hear him or be insulted by him or look upon the sky and rest knowing that he was under the same one. No one would ever know her or remember her life the way he had because no one had witnessed as much as he had. No one that was still alive, anyway. 

She slid off the bench onto her knees, lurching haphazardly towards the crumbling edge of the balcony. Her fingers felt the warm, rough sandstone and her body shook violently with the churn of emotions storming through her. She panted, trying desperately to suck in more air in between horrible shuddering cries. Finally, everything became too much and the horrible sensation washing over her reached its peak and she threw up what remained of her lunch over the side. 

When she was done, she crawled back up onto the bench to tuck her legs under her and leaned her head on the stone wall. She stared unseeingly out over the horizon, where the sky kissed the ocean. Even as the hysterics started to abate and she could breathe again, her pain flowed endlessly through tired eyes. Tears coursed her cheeks silently in between sniffles so violent her entire shell of a body shook roughly like a flinch. The sun traipsed the sky and reddened her forehead and still she did not move. She heard the dinner bells and processions and didn’t respond, her stomach not hungry for any food. 

At some point she wondered if they would search for her and dismissed it. Even if they did, the only person who knew where her old chambers were and why she would go back to them was the reason she was here. The only person who could find her no matter what was dead. 

“You promised me you wouldn’t do anything stupid. You promised you’d come back,” She finally accused the setting sun in a hoarse, ragged voice. It didn’t answer and she was silent as she watched it sink below the ocean, bathing the world in darkness. By the time the glowing heart of the sunset disappeared, she was empty and exhausted and completely numb. 

And now, as the moon moved half past it’s nightly reign, she stood. Her eyes were tired, bones weary and knees weak. Her face felt like a tight mask and her body felt dry, like a shirt freshly wrung from the  river wash . 

She went to leave the balcony, retire to her chambers for some paltry sleep. They were due to leave for the North at midday and it wouldn’t do if the Lady of Winterfell was bleary and confused. She was to leave this place, once and forever, and never return to this spot. She decided she would never stand on the balcony of her deepest agonies ever again. A lick of anger coursed through her heart at Sandor. 

“You left me with nothing,” She spat at the empty space on the bench and balled up her fists as she finished with a watery, “All I had was you.” 

She inhaled shakily once more and then assessed herself – she ran her hands down over her skirts and hair and barely fixed her harried appearance before she turned and swept from the chambers. 

As she walked freely through the Red Keep, aware of the ghost of a heavy tread behind her and feeling the shadows of horrors past still soaked into the walls. As she walked, she buried him. 

In her emotions. 

In her mind. 

In her heart.

X

It rained so hard following the Northerners leaving that even the days felt somber and nightly. It poured buckets of sleet-like rain down onto the figures huddled on a large black horse, sluicing streams off the edges of their bowed hoods. As they approached the Mud Gate in the latening evening, the gatemaster observed them shrewdly through a bolt hole from above. The horse slowed and the larger figure in the back got off, landing in the mud with an authoritative splash. The old man left his post to submit to his duties, suspicious as he was.

A fist slammed against the gatehouse door in three powerful strikes and the figure waited. Water dripped off the archways above and the light off the hanging oil lamps was harsh in the moist air. There was quiet movement behind the door before a small square was pried open and the wizened visage of a skeptical elderly man glared out. 

“Gates closed,” He announced at the figure, whose face remained shadowed despite the curious glance  underneath . All the old man saw was a dark beard and unsmiling mouth. 

“Open it,” The figure grunted and the man laughed to an unseen person to the side. 

“Open it, he says. Ey, can’t you fuckin’ ‘ear? Said  _ gates closed _ ,” He reiterated flippantly and within the space of a second, the wooden square was smacked shut and there was an audible sound of a bracket being lowered to bar the door. 

The figure waited a moment before he raised his fist, banging twice more. 

A moment later, the same haughty face flipped the viewport open again. 

“Got something that’ll change my mind?” 

“Open the gate or I’m coming through it. Cunts are cheap, I’m sure the King would accept a gold dragon for the trouble of replacing you,” The figure rumbled at him, voice like rocks sliding down a cavern. The man glowered at him and seemed to consider for a moment. He jumped visibly and paled as a heavy boot slammed against the door before the figure turned and marched back to his destrier, who snorted thick steam in the quickly falling darkness. He could see the unmoving figure sitting ahead in the saddle, head down, not acknowledging the larger figure returning to mount and glimpsed her pale features. 

Irritably, he slapped the viewport shut and signaled the lads to open the gates. He retreated to his fire in the small gate room, easing himself down onto the rickety chair and pouring himself some mead as he listened to the clank and  gind . Eventually, the muffled trot of hooves hit cobblestone and the figure was heard moving off through the Fish Market. His sister had told him all kinds of dead creep through the Mud Gate and it wasn’t the first time he’d been threatened by one. 

However, he was old. He remembered names from the ages and had seen and talked to  most notable folk if their business came his way.  This, however, this was the first time he was fairly sure he’d been addressed by the Hound. 

He’d opened the gate for this very reason. That, and the face he’d seen lurking under the other figure’s hood had certainly been that of Cersei Lannister. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hiiiiii
> 
> 1) many sorry for the break, i decided to do NaNoWriMo and spent most of October plotting for that and then when I came back to Pragma it felt weak and uninspired so i had to redo it.  
2) I didn't want to just cap it at 2 chapters and call it a work so we're gonna try to have a lil' story here and it will go to 6 chapters.  
3) Don't see the pregnancy tag and start expecting things like a birthing scene and the like because that's not my style at all (sorry, see you all later. thanks for coming.)  
4) I feel like my other shorts and stories are for everyone but for whatever reason this one is for a very limited audience so i'm gonna do my best to make it good for you guys.  
5) real world time has passed and time has passed in the story so if the tone change throws you out of the story please know I've done my best to smooth that out and am sorry.  
i want your totally biased and feverish opinion, HIT ME.


	4. Found

Golden sun poured through the tall leaded glass windows that lined the right-hand side of the stone hallway. Dust or fog or swirling mist churned and eddied around her fingers and the edges of the faint blue Dornish gown she wore as she walked through shafts of light.  
  
The mist tinkled and whispered around her like a million fairies and yet didn’t hide the familiar heavy step behind her.   
  
She knew the warm hand that slid up her arm to cap her left shoulder before his lips met the right side of her neck. Sansa sighs and turns into him, a smile climbing onto her lips briefly before they were covered with his.   
She relished their kiss, so familiar and yet so strange. A bolt of desire surged through her body and she clung to him, pushing her chest against his and allowing him to tilt her head back and devour her mouth. They fell, the stone floor wicking away from existence like a snuffed candle. A now familiar heat filled her mind.   
  
Her body was burning, alive and demanding. Sansa moaned and dug the nails of one hand into Sandor’s furred thigh behind her and wrapped her other arm around his head, trapping his mouth at her nipple as she writhed and stirred herself on his cock. He sat in a bed that faintly resembled the one she had in the Red Keep, slicked with sweat and his head bent to tease her breast with his lips and tongue. Sansa ground down on him, seeking a deeper purchase on the pleasure burning through her.   
She released Sandor’s dark head to plant both hands behind her and jerk her hips up and down on his, a desperate whimper falling from her lips as Sandor leaned back and hissed, his gaze pinned to the sight of them joined. His hands ran up her thighs, a deep and contented growl rumbling through his great chest as Sansa thrusted and blindly chased the white peak of pleasure just out of reach. His words of encouragement were distant scrapes and groans until his voice sounded clearly in her ear, hoarse and reverent and lustful.   
  
“I’ll fill you with child,” He prayed to her as she let out a cry.   
  
Her vision exploded and she rocked on him through the violent wave, opening her eyes only as the room around her exploded. Sansa shrieked, looking over her shoulder at a giant hole in a wall she’d not noticed. The stench of burnt flesh and oily reptile filled the room and she looked into the horned face of a mean looking dragon. Jon’s white face peeked off its shoulder, half hidden by the fur lining on his old cloak from the Night’s Watch.   
“JON!” Sansa screamed as she tried to clamber towards him.   
  
“If I go with her, she takes me away. If I kill her, she takes me away. Either way, you’ve lost me,” Jon shouted to her over the gale of a new and howling wind that whipped her hair painfully around her face. Sansa reached for him, ignoring the imminent and threatening heat that roiled off the beast.   
“I can protect you! You belong with me!”   
“You are allowed to have what so many died to protect. You’re allowed to love.”   
“No! No!”   
  
The room rumbled and the dragon turned and leapt into the horizon, spiked tail narrowly missing her face as Sansa ran after him.   
  
“NO DON’T LEAVE ME!”   
  
Her scream echoed through her head as she plummeted off the tower, and suddenly the Courtyard was below. As she fell towards the ground, she recognized at the last second that she was about to land on someone. The face tilted up, scowling and beautiful and hatefully passive. Cersei even had a goblet of wine in her hand as Sansa collided.   
  
“Oh!” Sansa yelped as she snapped awake while the carriage she was in jerked and bounced roughly. Confusedly, Sansa looked at the other occupants, who looked bleary and miserable as they swayed unevenly back and forth. The air was thick with warmth as if they were in an overfilled tent and Sansa realized her legs under her clothes were wet with sweat due to the thick fur blanket covering her lap and legs.   
  
It came over her like having her ears boxed - the nausea made her deaf to all other concerns. Sansa was suddenly desperate and with a muffled gurgle, kicked the blanket off.   
  
“My lady!” Her maid exclaimed as Sansa lunged for the small hatch door and wrenched it open to reveal uneven and snowy road rolling by. Her foot found the step and before she could really process the speed, Sansa hopped off and stumbled into a snowbank without fully losing her footing. She managed to gather her skirts and wade through the snow to disappear into the trees. The entire cavalcade of carriages and horses scrambled to a stop as multiple people called out to her unheard.   
Sansa rushed as far as she could but the sound of running water reached her and her stomach revolted. She threw up inelegantly, heaving and clinging absently to a young tree as she struggled to spit and breathe. A few gasps of air and she’d course downwards again at the hip, loudly retching.   
  
After repeating this motion a few times, the feeling ebbed away. It didn’t fully disappear as it usually would but it also didn’t demand immediate action. Sansa queasily pressed a hand to her stomach and gingerly moved to the melt stream. She stooped and splashed water over her face hastily.   
  
“My lady?”   
  
Sansa gasped, water running down her features as her eyes widened and darted around. Panic rushed through her body and she spat once more, clearing her mouth of the vomit.   
  
“I’m coming!” She called back with as much nonchalance as she could muster. Her mind was spinning and an anxiety of certainty was welling up under her diaphragm. They’d been travelling for 14 nights and were nearer to Winterfell and her coronation than she was ready for. She was struggling with sleeping in the carriage and was restless and snappy. Her head frequently pounded with the sound of her heartbeat and she was progressively exhausted.   
  
Sansa was the third eldest of her siblings and eldest daughter. She was young but old enough that when her Lady mother had fallen pregnant, Sansa was her main assistant. She’d assisted Lady Cat through Arya, Bran and Rickon and shortly before her first departure from Winterfell to King’s Landing had been made to assist in the birth of a Cerwyn child. Sansa was bred to be a lady and knew what ladies were for.   
  
She’d denied it herself and told herself that she was awaiting her moonblood and the ailments were a sign of it coming. She’d been waiting for nearly two moons and in the 14 days since they’d left King’s Landing, she’d made an excuse to disappear into the wood roadside maybe 12 times to discreetly vomit. Her personal maid, Arna, was beginning to suspect something.   
  
The river water that was so cold it felt like it scalded her as she rinsed her mouth and wiped her face again. Her mind spun like a series of complicated locks clicking into place and then unclicking in denial.   
There was only one way to make a child. She’d had many moons of red since Ramsay had died and something in her soul knew what her head was trying so hard to deny.   
  
Sandor Clegane was dead.   
  
However, his child was growing inside her.   
  
She was to be crowned Queen in the North in less than a week, was unmarried and felt no plans to marry again. As she left the stream and began walking back to the travel party, her brain thought furiously. There was no way to hide it eventually and there would be questions. Something tightened in her chest and jaw as she walked and she decided at that moment – she would never answer those questions.   
  
There was no way she’d allow her child to carry the name of a bastard. Not with the way she’d seen the world treat Jon, who had turned out to be the Heir to the Targaryen Dynasty. Bastards weren’t disposable or shameful and treating them as such bred monsters like Ramsay Bolton, who thirsted for nothing more than his noble entitlement.   
  
If she would have no other man and no further children, the child growing in her was the future. This was the future Stark in Winterfell.   
  
Regardless, this was her child and she was Sansa Stark.   
  
Queen in the North, or rather, soon-to-be.  
  
Producing a child would be advantageous and fulfill some of her responsibility to the realm and might help her evade being pressured into another marriage. She could make proclamations and execute new order and knew that a simple raven to Bran would have the Iron Throne backing her up but she also knew it would spur rumors. Rumors lead to controversy and controversy leads to revolt.   
  
She’d never be able to decree her way out of it without stoking resentment. Her people would feel robbed unless she had a plausible course of action and the only acceptable course was a marriage.   
To whom that could be, Sansa did not yet know and was less than invested in thinking about it. Her heart still bled with the wounds of grief, the idea of another man taking his husbandly rights from her unwilling form was enough to cause another wave of nausea as she climbed the slope towards the Kings Road.   
  
“My lady?” Came questioningly through the trees and Sansa huffed as she trudged back through the frozen brush, struggling to free her skirts.   
  
“Don’t worry,” She called as she tugged and stumbled slightly when the material came free, “I’m right here.”  
  
Arna’s comely round face relaxed from its pinched expression and she offered her hand as Sansa emerged from the trees and clambered as elegantly as possible over the snowbank.  
  
“The midday clarity is hitting. You can see Winterfell, my Lady,” Arna exclaimed dreamily and Sansa’s head snapped around to follow her gaze.   
  
It looked to be part of the landscape, dark grey like a hulking mountain on the horizon. If she held her hand up to it, the castle was no bigger than her pinky. Still a day's ride away, despite the youth of the weak but bright sun blazing overhead. Her coronation mere days away following day, Sansa was anxious to return.   
  
The growing issue she’d just admitted to herself was problematic at best. Becoming Queen would offer its own protections as well as its own perils but there was no other way but forwards.   
Sansa inhaled sharply and turned back towards her loathsome carriage, dreading the bump and grind on her bones as they continued up the ragged winter road.   
  
“We won’t get there by looking at it. Let’s be on our way,” Sansa announced as cheerily as she could, giving short nods to gathered soldiers and household gentry. People immediately began drifting back to their positions and Sansa steeled herself as she strode back to her jail-carriage.   
  
She clambered in without help, now fully accustomed to it enough to become irritated if assistance was forced upon her. She sat on the forward-facing bench and tried not to arrange the blanket in her lap too irritably. She expected the three other travelling companions – Arna and her new Captain’s Guard and the temporary Maester – to join her and was surprised when only the maid got in with her. The carriage jerked to a bumpy start again as Arna militantly opened the window covers and let the fresh Northern air course through both sides of the space. Without invitation, she then sat on the bench beside Sansa and arranged the blanket in her own lap as Sansa watched her with curiosity.   
They sat in silence for a few moments, Arna’s gaze forward and Sansa’s eventually returning outside without a hint of reproach.   
  
“Not wanting to work for the kennelmaster, may I speak?” Arna suddenly asked.   
  
Sansa’s gut twisted knowingly and she allowed herself a long, slow inhale before she tore her eyes away from the figure of Winterfell on the horizon to answer.   
  
“Sensitive topics are best discussed honestly,” Sansa commented primly and the woman took a nervous breath, looking at the hands she had folded in her lap.   
  
“Before I became a Northerner and before the war, I had two youngin’s,” Arna told her with a happy lilt to her voice, proud and tremulous at the same time. Sansa’s heart twinged sharply and she gave the woman a sidelong glance of sympathy. Suddenly, she was looking directly into the woman’s sharp hazel eyes and saw knowing wisdom.   
  
“You’re not alone you know. Before long, people’ll talk and that’s that. A babe don't care. A babe don’t care and it’s going to come anyway at this point, isn’t it? It’s too late for moon tea?”   
Sansa’s lips quivered and hot tears threatened as she took a shaky breath. It was her turn to stare at the wall across from them studiously.   
“Even if it weren’t,” Sansa’s words fell to a whisper as she let the honesty pour from her heart, “I’d dare not take it.”  
  
Arna nodded.   
  
“It wasn’t forced,” She concluded and Sansa shook her head, the tears filling her eyes. Arna was silent and let Sansa have her moment to turn her face away, looking unseeing outside at the passing trees as some tears fell freely down her cheek.   
A shy touch was felt on the back of her hand before it was grabbed and clutched by the woman’s calloused ones. Sansa miserably met her eyes and found something grossly akin to hope on the maid’s face.  
  
“Come the fury of the Gods, I’ll help you. We’ll see to it; you’ll have a fat, happy babe. The Future Prince or Princess of Winterfell, isn’t that exciting?” She asked with a gush of happiness and a grin.   
  
Sansa immediately began to balk but caught herself and considered. In the Riverlands, it was believed that the babe could experience their mother’s emotions and life and it could affect them in their own. Her own mother had lived with this philosophy with all her children.   
  
Half of Lady Catelyn’s children turned into Kings or Queens; Sansa mused she’d want the same.   
  
Reluctantly, she squeezed Arna’s hand back and allowed a shaky smile to bleed onto her lips. Maybe, in private, it would be best to celebrate a little one. She’d never want her child to feel dreaded, especially given that was the primary experience of the child’s Father.   
  
“Is it wrong of me to pray for a Princess?” She whispered and Arna gave her a beaming smile. They dissolved into discussing anything they could think up in relation to planning, hands intertwined between them and the bumpy, miserable road underneath forgotten. 

  
  
  
xXx   


“Rather quick, don’t you think?”   
  
Sandor Clegane stared out at the currents of Blackwater Rush from the courtyards of the Red Keep, face stony and impassive as the Master of Coin jauntily approached. The man placed an oiled leather sack on the ground beside his feet before standing beside him. Sandor’s sneer went from the package on the ground to the saucy man before he grunted noncommittally.   
  
“She only screamed the once. Good on her,” He replied shortly and the old mercenary sighed dramatically.   
  
“I’d prepared a list of ways to execute her but the King lives by the people.”   
  
“Ned Stark believed in rule of land.”   
  
“Oh, letting them have her wasn’t his first plan. Rumors came out of the fishmarket – people knew by sun up. I’d call giving her to them a publicity stunt, if I didn’t know any better.”   
  
“And what’s better that you know?” Sandor challenged with a low growl that the other man rewarded him with a flinty smirk.   
  
“Our King? That’s not a Stark. Not even entirely sure he’s human. What man is happy not having a fuck? He’s whatever lives beyond the Wall.”  
  
“You sound like a paranoid drunk from White Harbour.”   
  
“Drunks don’t have anything to do but watch. They know more than you think,” Bronn retorted and Sandor snorted derisively.   
  
“It the repeating it that’s the issue.”   
  
“Gossip killed Cersei.”   
  
“A barmaid with a pitchfork in a mob killed Cersei,” Sandor corrected flatly and the other man finally cracked a good-natured smile.   
  
“Aye. Might go see if I can bury my face between the teats of the woman who killed the Lion Queen,” He declared wolfishly.   
  
“There’ll be a line,” Sandor commented.   
  
“Master of Coin,” Bronn reminded confidently as he used the toe of his boot to nudge the bag at Sandor’s feet, “By the by, that’s your payment.”   
  
“Evidence - and your rumors came from the Gatemaster.”   
  
“Call it what you like, it’s delightfully morbid. Did they? I’ll have to go down and have a chat.”   
  
“I’m sure. Enjoy your teats, Coinmaster,” Sandor told him ruefully as the other man whirled on his heel and began to confidently walk away. Bronn let out a small cackle and stuck his pointer finger into the air and shouted back conspiratorially, “And you, dog! And you!” 

  
  
  
xXx   


  
The afternoon sun beat warmly down on black feathers as it sailed through frigid air.   
  
The raven angled down, cutting through the sky and plummeting towards the dark sprawl of castle perched amidst the endless white lands around it. The corvid pulled up as the parapets loomed and glided over the heavy grey tapestries, avoiding the snarling wolves on snapping flags.   
  
It landed heavily on the windowsill of the Maester’s Tower and rapped smartly on the glass with a thick, slightly hooked beak. After a moment, the window was opened and the bird was allowed in. Once inside on the desk, it stuck its leg out smartly for the man to untie the heavy scroll and feasted in the feed dish by the window.   
  
The man made a confused hmm-ing noise as he read the recipient’s name. The raven finished feeding and cocked its head at the Maester, who gestured at the window.   
  
“He’s certainly not here for a reply. Off you go,” The man scoffed as he peered down at the unopened scroll, debating opening it. The raven cocked its head the other way, staring intently. The man noticed and stiffened before stuffing the scroll in his robes and shooing the bird towards the window.   
  
It hopped up on the sill and prepared to go before looking back accusingly. The man’s face pinked slightly.   
  
“I’ll do my duty, Seer. I only worry about her,” He rebuked nervously.   
  
The raven’s gaze lingered before it made a low, guttural call and took off, the breadth of its great wings creating a gust of air that scattered loose papers on his desk. The Maester watched it go resentfully.   
Even if the King wasn’t in the bird, his compatriots working in King’s Landing assured him – he could be.   
  
He could be anywhere, nowadays.   


  
  
xXx   
  


  
Noble.   
  
Hopeful.   
  
Determined.   
  
Queenly.   
  
Sansa stood with her back to the dias, in front of what had once been her Father’s chair.   
Then her brother, Robb.   
  
Then her cousin, Jon.   
  
And now it had been remade for her – two Stark direwolves snarled up the backside, buffeting her head and guarding her crown. A roaring fire snapped and crackled behind the throne, illuminating it and the strength it commanded. It featured stern dark wolfswood mahogany and a comfortable, pert red seat. The authority that radiated off of it soaked into her chest and settled deep in her formerly nervous tummy. The only thing left in the world that made her feel power at her back. She’d been Queen of the North for less than 3 days and already the burden of duty was cumbersome.   
  
“Another has come into the courtyard,” Cormant the Chief of Staff muttered to Sansa as he made notations in his ever-present ledger. Sansa bowed to the peasant man in front of her, thanking him gently for his time before the dirty man turned to leave.   
“How many?” Sansa asked quietly as she returned to her seat. Cormant sniffed with irritation, his only tell.   
  
“One. He was admitted for audience because he had a gift.”   
  
“I’m growing tired, Cormant. We have been here since midday and the sun went long ago,” Sansa reminded him in lieu of a complaint. The man’s eyebrows flashed upwards as he nodded in agreement and signaled the soldier by the door to bring the gift.   
“He’s the last one for this fortnight, Your Grace,” Cormant reassured her, using the formal moniker she despised. The Chief wasn’t insolent, just stubborn in his manners and refused to adhere to her request he use her name. Sansa disliked the reference, preferring her name over titles that reminded her of countless Lannisters.   
  
Not the ones she’d care to remember, anyway.   
  
The doors of the Hall at the back opened to admit the rider to her audience, just as a soldier came forward and placed a thick, oiled leather bag on the table between Cormant and Sansa. Both of them looked suspiciously at the sac, dirty and smudged and splashed with mud. It had no note or indication of its contents.   
  
“Your Grace, please allow me,” Cormant said with disgust and scraped his chair back as Sansa stepped forward. She gently lifted a hand and waived him down, now curious as to the gift. It certainly wasn’t one of the fine white goats she’d received three of this day.   
  
A figure in an equally mud spattered and snow-melted cloak strode to the middle of the room, standing before her in the same apparent awe every other pauper who’d sought to bring her gifts and their problems had regarded her with. Then, he kneeled.   
As was custom, Sansa didn’t greet or look at the subject until she’d opened the gift. She stepped closer and opened the bag.   
  
At first, she wasn’t sure what she was looking at. It stank of death as soon as the pouch was opened and the familiar punch of smell made her stagger back and gag slightly. Cormant stood and grasped the bottom of the sac, wrenching it upwards and upending the contents onto the table before the Hall.   
  
The object was small and rounded and had a shock of filthy blond hair. As it stilled on the tabletop, Sansa saw eyes closed in a grimace, the flattened bridge of a nose and lips peeled back from perfectly arranged teeth. The slightly pointed incisors were grotesquely familiar.   
  
Cersei Lannister.   
  
Sansa let out a cry of astonishment, taking an additional few steps away from the mauled head on the table. She felt like someone had thrown a full pail of ice water over her, the shock echoed through her bones.   
Cersei was very, very dead.   
  
Sansa's wide, astonished eyes swung to the dirty rider in the center of the room. He was in an automatic kneel and with some stiff difficulty, stood to a great height. Sansa had only seen one person that tall and as he drew back his hood to reveal dark, glittering eyes she realized she was looking into the face of that person.   
  
Sandor Clegane had just given her the head of Cersei Lannister.   
  
Sandor was alive.   
  
_Alive.   
_  
The word pulsed through her brain as she fought to fill her lungs with air. Sansa stared at him and took one jerky step toward him. Somewhere a woman screamed and there was a flurry of movement as she swayed. 

She didn’t feel it when she hit the flagstone floor.   
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> awkward hello 
> 
> my life has been plagued with work, holidays and required travel this season, so I haven't had much time to work on fanfiction in general, let alone this. I will be finishing this story, I promise you. If you've read this since the beginning, you're a mix between angel and masochist and I deeply appreciate you. 
> 
> as usual, it's just me in the editing department so blame me. 
> 
> thank you, much love 
> 
> xx


	5. Wrench

The snow was thick and fluffy; it helped the scouts be quiet. 

They were hunched in the thicket at the base of the trees, well within the forest line but within view of the massive stone edifice that lurked in the darkness. Winterfell would be all but invisible at night if the sky wasn’t so starkly clear, the moon so bright and had the parapets not been lined with sharply burning braziers. The beacons made the castle plainly visible from its vantage point. The men murmured in the Old Tongue, discussing their observations when another man prowled from the dark trees to join them. He squatted in the bushes and used a hand to push some of the branches down to gaze upon the castle. 

“They’ll know we’re here. Hunters found our snares,” One of the men said, switching to Common hastily as the third man joined them. The other man was more reluctant, less learned, but eventually followed suit. 

“They got pretty close to camp when they looked but they didn’t see anything,” He said finally and the third man grunted his acknowledgment. 

“We’ll move the men just before day. They’ll be sending out another hunting party as the sun rises.” 

“You know?” 

“I know,” The third man replied, eyes tracing the windows and studying the snowy treetops peeking over the tops of the Godswood walls. The two other men looked at one another and then respectfully said nothing. 

The third stood, his knees clicking loudly and he let out a long-suffering sigh as he said, “I’ll stay behind. The Queen will come out if one of us is found. I’ll do what I have to do and we can go.” 

The watchers said nothing and after a long pause, the third man turned away and shrunk back into the dark. 

xXx 

Some people awoke with a groan. 

Others simply fluttered their eyes open. 

Sansa woke, sat up and was pulling her blankets back before Arna could scurry across the room in her bedclothes. The room was dark and hot – the only light came from the embers in the grate. She could see the sky was turning lighter; early morning. A streak of hazy orange that heralded the sun bled from the distant horizon through the lead glass diamonds in her windowpanes. 

“You are alright, Your Grace. You had a shock -,” The maid began in a quiet murmur but Sansa bluntly cut her off as she stood, swaying slightly. 

“It was real? I didn’t imagine it?” 

“Cormant said the head was real but -” 

“Nevermind the head this moment, please Arna, the rider was Sandor Clegane, was it not? Was it?” Sansa asked her desperately and the other woman was silent a moment, the weak light from the fire concealing the majority of her features. There was a long silence in which Sansa’s frantic, slightly panicked breathing was the only noise rising through the air and a moment too late, she noted the error of her panic. 

“It was him - he sired the babe,” The maid whispered in realization and Sansa’s breath stilled in her lungs. Her fingers found Arna’s upper shoulders as a frank hysteria clamped around her chest to mingle with the frustration climbing up her throat; her fingers gently dug in as she gripped the woman.   
  
"Arna,” Sansa almost growled, “was it Clegane?” 

“Yes,” She finally said and Sansa’s knees almost went out from her with the relief that coursed through her. She almost looked around, expecting him to step forward from the shadows. Instead she stepped back and ran her hands over her face while she exhaled heavily. 

“Where is he?” Sansa finally managed to weakly ask. The maid was quiet and Sansa could sense her trepidation and reluctance to answer the question and her temper flared unexpectedly. 

“I don’t confide in you so you can monitor me,” She reminded tightly and the other woman let out a long-suffering sigh. 

“He’s in the long-hall at the foot of the Captain’s Tower. You...your Grace, surely _ not _?” Arna gasped in dismay as Sansa moved to one of the chairs flanking the fireplace and began putting on her outdoor cloak. 

“You are saying you wouldn’t go to your husband in the same event?” 

“My apologies, Queen Sansa, but he is not your husband.” 

_ That can be seen to _, something in Sansa’s brain sniffed disdainfully. Her face betrayed nothing as she finished fixing the cloak and fussed briefly with the clasp that rested against her clavicles. 

“I won’t be seen,” Sansa replied instead as she lifted the thin skirts of her sleeping gown and put her feet into some well-worn leather castle slippers. Arna made a noise of discontent, unable to verbally or physically prevent the Queen from leaving and wrung her hands. 

“And yet if you’re caught? The patrols and cooks will be waking soon. What is your plan - to announce your title? You’ve no business there at this hour,” The woman tried again as Sansa moved to the door and put her hand on the handle. Sansa paused and thought deeply, remembering all the times she’d stolen from her rooms; as a child in this very fortress to exploring the Red Keep in her middle years and later slithering around the Eyrie. Most of her life, she’d been haunted by regents who would be infuriated she was skulking about their castle, witnessing their secret dealings. 

“I should think. This is my home and I’ll go where I see fit,” She decided finally and ignored Arna raising her arm and waving her off, flopping the same appendage at her side listlessly. 

“As you say,” The maid sighed to a now empty room. 

The castle itself was still asleep and nothing stirred as Sansa hurried through it. The air was chilled and seemed to cling to every small scuff and step of leather on stone. Her skirts and robe felt as loud as a war flag at the head of a contingent. Struggling twilight stole through boltholes and windows to light her way as she slipped past doused torches. Tapestries ruffled and hidden stones ground and Sansa suddenly went from a dark corner on the top floor to another, darker corner at the foot of the Guard Tower. Here, she paused and listened. 

Faintly, the splash and drip of water from the baths drifted from behind. A brazier somewhere up the tower roiled and snapped with flames lit by slow-feed oil and cast a long, flickering light. Sansa startled when a heavy door in a hallway somewhere behind her opened and the voices of two men sounded, growing nearer and sharper. She hastened back to the passage she’d appeared from and hid just behind the heavy tapestry fabric. 

The men were guards, freshly washed and carrying their garb. One of them had a jointed greave in his arms that shrieked slightly with every step but she couldn’t see their faces, despite the one of them carrying a lantern. 

“Oh, yeah. Think he even slept?” The taller man with the lantern asked the shorter one carrying the loud armour. He jerked his head at the closed door to the left of the stairs going up the tower. The shorter one sighed. 

“If he knows what’s best, he’d’ve. Nessa said he had wine for dinner.” 

“I would too if I’d made the Queen’s head crack on the floor.” 

“Hardly his fault, he was across the room. Cormant could’ve gotten off his arse,” The shorter one commented and Sansa watched the round shape of the tall one’s head bob in agreement. Her eyes fastened feverishly on the door as the men made for the stairwell, confirming for her what she needed to know. Their voices and footsteps retreated up the tower and Sansa stole from her hiding spot and strode quickly to the door. She placed one hand on the wood, finding it not frosty and knew there was a fire in the room. Quickly, before anyone else could emerge from the bath's hallway, she opened it and slipped in. It closed when she leaned on it with her shoulders once inside. 

When she raised her eyes, he was already looking at her. He was half out of his chair, a sturdy bench by a small but deep fireplace and her breath once again left her lungs as she saw him. 

His beard was longer and the streak of grey in it whiter and his clothes had been changed to what appeared to be freshly stitched Northern linen. The neck of the shirt hung wide and was untucked from some rough brown pants. He somehow appeared larger without his cloak and armour on. Larger and yet more human. It felt like her brain was trying to consume his image, she studied him so closely. 

She pushed away from the door and took the easiest six steps across the room she’d ever taken, planting her hands on his shoulders and shoving him back down onto the bench he was struggling to rise from. 

“Sansa -,” He tried gently and she shook her head. 

“No,” The word was like iron and ice as she hissed it and her hand shot out to tangle in his beard, clenching the length between her fingers tightly. His eyes were the same; dark and glittering with something that could be amusement, could be arousal, could be awe. A raw current coursed through her as she lifted one leg and put her knee on the bench before easily straddling his thighs and capturing his mouth with hers. The moment flared between them and neither breathed for a few moments as they kissed – it wasn’t until the tension went from his shoulders and his hands stroked up the small of her back that she broke away to gasp for air. 

Her hands found the sides of his face and she gazed deeply into his guarded, sorrowful eyes. He looked back steadily, his own gaze going from her mouth to her hair to her eyes to her neck. A frantic comparison to memory on both their parts; tears sprung to her eyes as the hole of despair that she’d kept covered and muffled opened in her chest again. 

“I thought you dead. I went and _ looked _ for you in King’s Landing, spent days tracking through rubble and corpses to find _ nothing _!” She hissed at him as the tears spilled over and rolled down her cheeks. They blurred her vision as she shook and a sob escaped her before she declared, “Very few times in my life have I wanted to die so much despite having so much to live for.” 

“I had to – she couldn’t live, Sansa. She’d raise her own army and even if she never regained the Throne, she’d come for you. Cersei without her children is a dangerous weapon to anyone who would use her – she would let herself be used to hurt you. Hurt the North,” He rasped sharply as he tried to capture her gaze, even as Sansa’s hand covered her mouth and her tears ran down her fingers. His great arms wrapped around her and gathered her against his chest, forcing her face against the side of his neck as he rubbed her back. Sansa openly sobbed, letting the hysteria of relief course through her and soak the neck of his fresh shirt. The sensation of his arms around her and the warmth of his skin under her cheek had been one she longed for in her grief and finally feeling it again sent her tumbling back down the same path, this time in relief instead of shock. She cried the tears of a hurt child finding solace in their mother or a preacher freed from the gallows – wholly released from her horror, free to put the nightmare to rest. It was only when the waves of sobs stopped that she heard his scraping tenor murmuring above her, “I had to – I'm sorry, Sansa. I had to. I had to.” 

Sansa sat back and pushed away from him, wiping her puffy face on her sleeve. 

“You _ didn’t _ have to,” She rebuked him, “You didn’t have to ...to nearly break me.” 

His face darkened and he glowered at the fire before hanging his head to look at his hands as he took a deep, laborious breath. Fury curled protectively around her heart, demanding an answer to its hurt. 

“Don’t tell me it was just for the North,” She whispered angrily at him, the quiet statement louder than anything else between them in that moment. Sandor stood, looking down on her menacingly and Sansa reacted by straightening her spine and giving him her best unflinching glare. She crossed her arms to hide the faint tremor in her hands and sniffed away the vestiges of her tears before she challenged him by shrugging her shoulders and saying, “The truth, if it please you.” 

“You’ve gotten the answer that pertains to you,” He retorted shortly as he swept past her to tug on some wool riding socks as he sat on the bed. Sansa watched with irritation, seeing his perfunctory preparation as his intent to leave and floundering as to how the current had changed so quickly. 

“Sandor, please,” She begged him and he glared at her as he finished putting them on and stood. 

“Cersei had many sins to pay for. That’s why an angry mob of her former subjects were allowed by their new King to rip her limb from limb,” He grated angrily as Sansa gasped in shock at the revelation. He fixed her with the same threatening, borderline mutinous expression he did when she was younger as he continued with his gush of temper, “I went after her for the North and the people who don’t need yet another cocked-up war. I went after her for you – for now, for when you were a little bird chirping your idiot courtesies. She let them have at you, let her tyrant son run rampant, let her hatred of anyone more beautiful than her almost kill you while you were a child. Aye, I had my reasons. Most of all, I went after her for myself.” 

Sansa was quiet, cowed by the sudden flow of honesty. 

“I am a Clegane but I was born Sandor. Cersei Lannister made me The Hound,” He finally rasped and the proclamation seemed to take something out of him – a secret, a private memory of pain that played out on his face. Sansa’s heart hurt for him and she bit her closed lips in an effort to remain quiet as his shoulders sank and he said, “She deserved to die for what she did to me and I’m only one bastard in the sea of them.” 

“She hurt you,” Sansa said in understanding. 

“She finished what Gregor started. They hurt her because she was beautiful. She didn’t think anyone as ugly as I could feel. Eventually I was a good dog and I didn’t,” He finished and she could tell from the stormy expression on his face that he would reveal nothing further. The dangerous dance to pull this omission from him had been painful enough. 

Sansa felt sick. Her arms wrapped around herself in consolation as she resisted the urge to reach out for him, his shoulders stiff and arms flexed angrily as he turned away from her and began layering his clothes from a trunk at the foot of the bed. 

“I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I thought you dead. I thought I lost you. I didn’t know what to do. I thought that our ch-,” Sansa began tearfully before he sighed and shook his head, cutting her off as he reached for her and dragged her against his chest, engulfing her once again. 

“It’s over. I have duties here. I’ll soon have men, given what your quartermaster told me,” He rumbled in reference to Cormant before he peeled her back to gaze into her face and tell her, “You can rule the North and I will be by your side. I don’t know how else to show it – I'm here, little bird. I will protect you from whatever I can, for as long as I can.” 

She looked back at him, sharp blue eyes piercing into his soul and seeing the fierceness of his declaration. Something in her wailed that it wasn’t enough and she tried to smile tremulously but it flickered and died on her face. Concern bled onto his, furrowing his brow. 

“What is it?” 

“Marry me,” Sansa breathed suddenly and watched his one eyebrow fly upwards violently as surprise slapped itself on his features. He slowly shook his head, the caution suddenly in his face mired with hurt. She reached for him, her fingers grazing and grasping the sleeve of fabric now over his thick forearms. 

“The nobles can do nothing if I’m already wed. It would be a shock at first but -” 

“Sansa. You’re a Queen. You can’t marry a... you can’t marry me.” 

“I know, I’m a Queen - I can marry whom I please!” 

“Worse! You’re a Queen, you absolutely cannot. You know this as sure as I know the colour of your cunt and don’t you deny it. Marrying me is...beyond unheard of. You have a role to uphold. I can protect you better as your shield, not your paramour. Mayhaps you’re a modern Queen, who has a favourite retainer,” He argued back to her bitterly and Sansa’s hands balled into fists as she showed him her teeth.   
“Even modern Kings want their children sired by them,” Sansa shot back and Sandor lifted his hands in a flippant shrug as he said, “Then you’ll have to let me know when to leave your bed, _Your Grace_.” 

A resounding silence fell between them as Sansa stared at him in outrage and Sandor finished dressing, shoving his feet into boots and ripping the leather laces tight. He wore a stony face that spoke of a hurricane in his head. The urge to start crying again climbed up the back of her throat, Sansa swallowing dryly to combat it. Frustration and sadness and relief and anger and confusion and surprise all rocked her back and forth like a ship; she was a sailor who had yet to find her sealegs. Everything in her mind became confused and desperate when it came to him, like she short circuited and lost control of all of her formalities and training. This was made worse by the fact that he was an angry, indominable hulk of a man who was comfortable and familiar with agony where she was not. 

“What do you get when you mix dogs with wolves?” She asked the room quietly, stilling his form as he turned his back to her and went towards the door. 

“Happiness won’t fix everything, Sansa,” He rasped tiredly without looking at her. 

“No, Sandor,” Sansa snapped as she moved closer and stepped up to his side. She grabbed his large hand and pulled it, haphazardly rubbing the back of his hand over the growing swell of her lower stomach as she said, “Coyotes.” 

His quizzical gaze froze and he stiffened as he watched his hand rub her. She let him go and watched as the paw slowly turned over. Hesitantly, his fingers spread out and gently cupped the curve. When she sought his eye, he looked eerily like some corpses she’d seen with a stunned expression and lances buried in their chests. 

“A coyote,” He echoed faintly and Sansa nodded. 

“Don’t you see? I’m not asking you to protect me. It’s not about me anymore,” She pleaded with him and suddenly his hand was gone from her to join the other on his face as he began scrubbing at it with his palms in stress. He gave the door in front of him a short, violent kick that made her jump. 

“By making yourself and the whelp a bigger target? Bastard child of Sansa Stark and the Hound? What a weapon, let’s announce it to the world. That child is as good as dead if anyone finds out its mine,” He suddenly said loudly, a burst of rage she hadn’t been expecting. He rounded on her, panic in his features and that scared her to her core as she took a step back from him. 

“What good does marrying me do? Other than condemn you both to a life lower than your blood. I have _ nothing _ , Sansa. I’m the second son of a minor house who has lived life as a hated monster, you’re better off marrying a little lord and having _ his _ child ‘early’.” 

“Don’t say that,” Sansa said wetly as she tried to stop her chin from quivering. His words were throwing daggers of fear and abandonment into her heart, making everything spin faster out of control. 

“What do you want me to say? Marry me and have a lovechild, I’m sure the Northern Lords will want to ward him _ right away _! Or she’ll have the best of marriage prospects,” He grated sarcastically and Sansa cried again as she shrieked, “Stop it!” 

“I’m sure everyone will be okay with a bastard being the Stark in Winterfell. After all, they loved the Bastard King!” 

“Stop!” Sansa screamed at him and he finally relented, panting and glaring at her. Her raking sobs were all that was left in the room as she clutched at a wobbly chair behind her as she swayed unsteadily. He briefly looked guilty and tried to reach for her but she shrunk back from him, desperately trying to wipe the water from her face. 

“Why...why must you make everything so horrible and awful,” She finally cried out at him and his face solidified into something full of chagrin and loathing, for himself or her she wasn’t sure. 

“That’s what I _ do _,” He snarled and picked up his furs and swordbelt. Without another look at her, he wrenched open the door and stalked into the hall. She half expected it to slam behind him but it gaped open and she listened to his footsteps pound an angry retreat down the hall and away from her. 

She stayed in the room until she calmed down, her stifled sobs eventually turning to hiccup-like sniffs. She felt hollow, like she’d been poisoned and the urge to lay down and curl into a ball nearly bogged her into his bed where she could at least smell his scent and pretend that he’d been happy. She felt like a fancy vase her mother had once had before Robb had hit it with a pebble from his slingshot – it cracked very slowly before bursting into a pile of destruction. 

The sky was pink and blue as she snuck out, easing his door shut and furtively glancing up and down the hallways before stealing her way back to the hidden tapestry. The trek back to the upper floors was uneventful, the majority of the activity from hunters and patrols getting ready to leave on the main floors. She saw no maids, even though the brackets lighting the way now danced merrily with flame. 

As if she were waiting for the sound of leather on stone, her door was pulled open and Arna’s face peeked out from behind it. She took one glance and opened the door wider, ushering her into the room and closing the door with a snap. Sansa didn’t feel or hear her fussing or the help back into bed. It was when Arna’s hand clasped hers and she tilted her head that Sansa’s ears let sound back in. 

“Did you tell him about the babe?” 

Sansa blinked once before she nodded and turned her head to look out the window at the brightening day outside. 

“He said it’s as good as dead if anyone finds out it’s his,” She said plainly and Arna gasped in outrage. Sansa didn’t react, only blinking owlishly to look at Arna and say, “Would you tell Cormant I still have a headache? I don’t feel -.” 

“Not to worry, I already begged him off. Told him you were sleeping and I’d have him tanned if he woke you after your fall,” The maid declared fiercely. Normally Sansa would have smiled or laughed at the woman’s audacity but in this moment, she merely nodded tiredly and then moved to lay on her side. Her eyes were blank and unseeing as she stared out the window. 

“I’ve had it wrong my whole life. So wrong. Now it’s too late. I’d rather be loved than be Queen,” She said quietly. Arna waited by the foot of the bed, leaning on the beam for the canopy but the other woman said no more. Instead, she seemed to slowly deflate until there was barely a lump visible under the furs. Once it was apparent the redhead was in her thoughts, the maid turned on her heel and left - easing the door shut behind her to not shock Sansa with any slamming or banging. 

Within minutes, Arna marched downstairs with a special type of fury burning in her heart. She’d seen Boltons and Lannisters and Cerwyns fighting in battle, she’d seen walkers, she’d seen undead Giants, she’d seen dragons. All of those things had scared her more than the last. 

When it came to Sandor Clegane, she was not afraid in the least. 

xXx 

“Clegane!” 

Sandor blinked and looked into the youthful face of the new master-at-arms, Alliser Tallhart. He jerked his barely-furred chin at two nervous looking metalheads saddled behind him. 

“Teach them something useful, would you?” 

Sandor gave them a derisive once over as Stranger stamped impatiently underneath him before he shrugged and said, “They’ll learn what they’re smart enough to remember.” 

“Is that how the failing armies of the South are trained?” Tallhart quipped and gave him a short smirk that Sandor didn’t return. He simply glared flatly until the smarmy cock snapped his fingers at the other two and pointed at Clegane, turned on his heel and began yelling orders at others loitering by the gates. Sandor watched him go resentfully, already hankering for a fight before he glanced at the greenhorns and whistled Stranger forward. 

“Come on – apparently I’m to teach you to use your fucking eyes,” He called to them and ignored the exchange of mutters he heard between them. The word ‘dick’ is easy to parse when it’s been whispered behind your back for your entire life. 

That was when another, portlier figure approached them. His long robes left sweeping trails in the snow. He stopped and appraised Stranger at eye-level, making the wise decision to not attempt to pet the beast’s snout. The horse stamped again, tired of the stop-go activity. His tail swished irritably to match the frustrated ears. 

“Clegane, a moment,” The Maester asked him and Sandor growled with annoyance as he delayed further to look down at the scholar. 

“What?” He snarled sharply. The two guards behind him snickered amongst themselves but the Maester rightly showed no reaction to either response. Instead, he reached into his robes and produced a letter that he wordlessly handed up. Sandor took it incredulously. 

“That came for you before you arrived,” The Maester explained. Sandor growled to himself again as he tore the seal open. 

“A darling task the Crippled King forgot to give me, no doubt,” He commented sarcastically. A raven landed in the lower branches of a tree nearby, claws scratching the bark loudly. Sandor watched the Maester’s eyes trail it nervously before the man cleared his throat. 

“While he isn’t the King in the North, a modicum of respect should be remembered,” He intoned stiffly and Sandor barked a sarcastic laugh. 

“Wait until the fools realize that treating him like a cripple is going to be their undoing,” Sandor jeered to further discomfort the academic, who pursed his lips and slipped his hands back into the folds of his tattered robes. 

“Good day, Clegane. Happy hunting,” He replied simply and turned back towards Winterfell’s gates. Sandor didn’t hear it, having opened the letter. His eyes ran over the words a few times before he frowned and read it again. His hands tremored faintly and he shook his head, reading the letter again before he folded it and shoved it in a saddlebag. His brain reeled for the second time in a matter of hours. 

The raven in the tree let out a low croak and he turned his head to glare at it. 

“I suppose you’re especially pleased with yourself, you nosy gimp,” He barked at it. The raven ducked its chest down towards the branch and let out a haunting call in reply. Sandor waved at hand at it dismissively, moving Stranger forward as he made another noise of irritation and rode off. The two following him looked at the raven with confusion as it took off from the tree. They hastily followed as Sandor’s voice drifted back to reach them, “Whenever you lads are done pissing yourselves.” 

They rode through the trees, following a well-worn path used by everyone who moved throughout the forest surrounding Winterfell. They headed up a hill towards a bluff that looked out over the Tundra, the edge of where the trees grew thick and wild – the Wolfswood. The day was bright and airy; birds chirped despite the prolonged cold and the trees creaked and snapped with the rushing wind. Snow cascaded off of soft, sweeping branches and were momentary gems in the sunlight. 

Sandor’s head was a thrashing storm of thoughts and emotions and he rode Stranger stiffly, causing the horse to pick his footing primly and jostle his rider. 

He was still grappling with the shock. 

He’d never felt a woman’s pregnant stomach before, let alone the swell of his own babe. There was no mistaking it, there was no way Sansa told a lie. Her soft, flat belly had a distinct curve that had pushed on his palm and was surprisingly firm. 

A _ child _. 

Children had never been his forte. He did his best not see them when he was going to war, at war or returning from war. War is never a place for children and that’s where he lived. Whatever pride he had over his crimes involving children was meant to disgust and horrify. He might have been following orders but at the end of the day, orders were an excuse. It was bad enough some of the soldiers he’d marched with were two pubes over the age limit, he had no place for children and their fear in battle. He did his best to distance himself from their suffering, however it was caused. 

_ His _ child was another thing completely. Another Clegane was the last thing he’d ever intend to inflict upon the world and it had been even more ludicrous that a woman would agree to bear him one. The idea of the _ type _ of woman who would agree to bear and mother children for the Hound had always led him to believe she was not the _ type _ of woman he’d leave his child with. Even pups from Cleganes were born innocent – he would never allow the same depravities befall his own offspring because of who he was. That was outside of fearing what type of monster that pup would turn into. Gregor was a monster, Sandor himself didn’t have a pretty temper, it stood to reason his kids would have his rage and fury and bloodlust. Just another beast to bite the ankles of whatever smallfolk needed scaring. 

_ Unless they’re born of Sansa _, a soft and cloying voice whispered to him. 

Sansa Stark. 

His beautiful, gentile, smart, loving, strong, fierce little bird. Long red hair and crystal-clear blue eyes with endless creamy skin and a perfect pouting cunt. His uncomfortable obsession with her started in the end days of King Robert’s reign when she was but a child herself; the imagining of her tired and heavy with his babe scrambled his mind in the same way that seeing a dragon breathing fire did. She came from the longest lines of Kings, traced straight back to the original Andals, had blood ties to Bran the Builder, was daughter of Ned Stark. Power and prestige ran in her veins and nothing in life so far had proven to beat it out of her and she was mixing all of _ her _ with...him. 

Scarred, burned, second son of a minor house. The one who bled his own mother out at his birth by shredding his way into the world, as his Father had described. He was lucky Gregor thought their Father would whip him for attacking Sandor and waited until the man left on a campaign – the Maesters to save him were expensive. When his Father returned to the castle and discovered the gold they’d spent on the face Sandor now had he’d shouted that a pillow would have been a better option – he now had a broken mouth to feed. How was he to even know what to do to make a child not a monster? His own face was a nightmare to behold, it being the image of love and affection from a parent was hardly likely to instill a sense of peace in a child. He barely understood how Sansa looked at him with anything other than formality in her eyes, which is the best most people could do. 

As it was, formality was a step above fear and disgust. 

Sandor inhaled sharply and leaned forwards, spying some snapped branches. He glanced back at his shadows and inclined his head before slowing Stranger and hopping off. The others did the same, loudly crunching over the struggling tree-filtered snow banks in armor to peer over his bicep. 

“Someone for sure came this way,” The one with a reddish beard said. Sandor glowered at the tree trunk in front of him at the banality of the observation. 

“Nothing gets past you. How long ago was it? Which direction? Were they hunters from the earlier contingent heading out or the Maester walking his fucking donkey before sundown yesterday?” He rasped threateningly at them and watched as both stared at the frayed branch with rampant confusion. He sighed and snatched it, using his thumbnail to open it and show them. 

“It’s bent this way, that’s where the force to break it was. They were approaching Winterfell, so it could have been hunters from yesterday. What do you see?” 

“Green,” The one with the black goatee said suddenly and Sandor nodded. 

“Young wood. Hasn’t dried out with exposure and caused the branch to die yet – broken within the last 6 or so hours,” Sandor explained dispassionately as the other two looked at each other with excitement. Sandor craned his neck, looking around at the other branches. He noticed the same breakage further up the path. Behind him, more branches tangled or snapped in the same direction. 

The back of his neck tingled and he realized all the snapped branches and twigs were only in one direction and unnaturally evenly spaced out. 

“Fuck,” He said out loud and both the two men with him stilled and quieted their conversation. Sandor’s hand went to his belt and gripped the hilt of his sword as he said, “Back on the horses.” 

The distinct lack of noise and compliance from behind him made his lips thin. 

An absolute absence of sound and movement from a space where two men had once been meant they were either no longer there or... 

Sandor sighed and turned around to glare at the two shaggy, fur-covered people holding crude daggers against the now exposed necks of the metalheads with him. He looked them up and down once before nodding to himself and then gesturing around him in a wide circle. 

“The rest of you cunts can come out. You’re not fooling anyone,” He called and within moments the majority of the trees and branches shifted and more people appeared, daggers and bows and clubs ready. Men and women, a few with red hair. 

“Don’t you fuckers have a whole frozen wonderland to go back to. Your new King know you’re vacationing outside his cousin’s house?” He demanded of them and crossed his arms, despite the open incredulity and confused panic on the guards faces as they were forced to kneel in the snow. 

“Yeah, I do,” A hoarse voice came from behind him and Sandor rotated in the spot as a man in a large, black wolf fur cloak lumbered from the treeline. His hair was long and tied hastily behind his head, lips chapped from cold wind. 

“I do believe the Broken King gave you instructions,” Sandor greeted him stiffly and Jon Snow nodded his acknowledgement as he approached Sandor and regarded him coolly. 

“I intend to fulfill them. Trust me, Clegane. I’m tired and eager to put things behind me. Sansa has always loved her family and I’m that. I intended to come back for the coronation but...I missed it,” He explained and for the first time, Sandor saw sorrow enter the man’s face as he swallowed thickly and continued saying, “I want to see her as Queen. So, she knows that...one of us did. Who knows if or when Arya returns?” 

The gravity of it settled in Sandor’s gut and he regarded the other man with resignation. Snow shrugged and gestured to him. 

“Bran will know if I go to the castle, there are always spies. You could tell her you caught a deserter from the Wall. She has duties to...” He began and Sandor cut him off. 

“I know which duties you allude to. It’s a cheap setup. By the by, he’ll already know. There’s been ravens everywhere for days,” He implied heavily and Jon raised his eyebrows as he looked around the clearing and then at the sky. They both sighed and Sandor ran a hand over his face while he made a decision. 

He turned on his heel and made for Stranger but the entire ring of Wildlings shifted forwards threateningly. He looked at Snow, who held up a hand and motioned for him to continue. 

“You know what my least favourite thing about this fucking part of the world is? Nothing feels like it was your idea. You can make any fucking choice you want and you’re still going to wind up where it feels like the Gods want you and isn’t that some piss in your eye?” He ranted as he stalked back to Stranger and ripped open a saddlebag. He rummaged and produced the crinkled letter from the Maester before returning back to the Wildling King and shoving it at him. 

Jon hesitantly took it, brow drawn in cautious confusion as Sandor crossed his arms. 

“You listen to what I have to say and I’ll help you see Sansa again,” Sandor declared and Snow snorted, gesturing to the circle around him with his eyes as he unfolded the letter. 

“You’re in a position to be giving demands?” 

Sandor considered for a moment, his brain flipping through everything that had happened to him in the last couple of weeks, let alone hours. He debated what the fallen Targaryen had to know before he cleared his throat and said, “That depends on your temper.” 

Jon looked at him for a moment, narrowing his eyes briefly. 

Sandor glanced at the guards kneeling in the snow and the men holding them and Snow followed his gaze. 

“You can knock them out,” Sandor declared and Snow nodded. 

He gave the order and both men grunted and clunked sideways together in a slump. 

xXx 

Her timing couldn’t have been better. 

She was drying her hands on her apron when she heard a commotion of noise outside the kitchens. Men on horseback coming through the Hunter's Gate, a few yells to carry a message throughout the castle. 

Arna took one look at the gigantic glossy black monster that the Hound rode, named cheekily after the specter of Death itself and stoked the fire of her anger. She’d spent most of the morning helping knead dough and peel potatoes and pluck chickens – the hardy, harsh work of a woman with rage in her veins. 

Now she spied the great brute as he abandoned the bodies of unconscious guards that had he had ridden into the yard. One of the guards was waking, faintly groaning and obviously confused while others shouted for boys to run for the Maester. Seemingly unconcerned, Clegane had set off across the yard at a sharp march. Arna was nimble and her small feet leapt over piles of dung and sod, skimming over puddles and allowing her to catch up to his shadow as he entered the kennels. 

The building was dark inside and she blinked as she came in from the blindingly bright winter day and spied his massive form lumbering through on his way to the Guest commons. 

“Clegane! You fuckin’ brute, you stop right there!” She called after him, trying not to yell and draw attention to herself. He slowed and turned around, the murderous expression on his face not melting into one of recognition. 

“If you want my cock, potato wench, that’s not the way to get it,” He growled at her and she approached him haughtily, giving him a false laugh. 

“T’would imagine just having red hair would do it for you on a rainy day, eh?” 

“Come closer, you look easy to choke,” He grated and showed her his teeth with a nasty smile. Something in her shivered at the familiar barbarity and she stowed the gush of revulsion and hatred that it brought out of her. Giving him what he wants. 

“Neh, you’ve done enough choking for today – if the Queen who is laying broken in her bed is any indication of it. You nasty, horrible, halfwitted son of a -,” She snapped at him, dissolving into a series of names she’d been practicing in her head since she had searched high and low for him earlier in the morning. 

“It was a small fall. You don’t know anything about anything, spinster,” He dismissed her and turned to go on his way. She tossed her head and crossed her arms, leaning all her weight insolently on one hip. 

“I know she’s heavier with whatever godsforsaken love for you that she has than she is with your babe,” Arna needled him and shrieked when he moved faster than lightning and she was slammed against a wall with his face inches from hers, mutinous intent written plainly on it. 

“You would shut your mouth if you cared for Sansa _ or _ that babe,” He breathed harshly on her with his hand clamped firmly over her mouth. He glanced up and down the hallway on either side of them suspiciously, dark eyes glittering in the low light. Arna’s eyes narrowed and Sandor growled again as he felt the sharp press of a small kitchen knife against his jugular. 

“Idiot woman,” He hissed at her as he slowly released her and stepped back from the knife she kept leveled at his neck as she coughed slightly and massaged her jaw. 

“You can’t stay here if you’re not with her. Sansa is stubborn but she listens to her people – if the castle wants you gone, she’ll see it done. I can make that happen,” Arna said coarsely, voice shredded with determination and soreness. 

“Yeah? Now I’ve fought your wars unless I do as you bid, you’ll run me out of the North? Bunch of whoresons,” He shot at her and Arna scoffed at him. 

“No, not for us. For _ her _ . Anyone has use for an angry cunt like yourself in a castle. You’re telling me she deserves to love someone that lives right under her nose and he wants _ nothin _ _ ’ _ to do with her? Or his -,” Arna tried but he cut her off with a guttural noise that came straight from his chest in warning and her mention of the child died in her throat. 

“That’s half the problem. I _ shouldn’t _ want anything to do with her. I should be on a fucking ship to Essos,” He snapped and after a moment Arna’s face lit with understanding. She stuck a finger out between them, conducting her thoughts as she spoke. 

“Of course, you’re such a mess – you're in love with her too, en’t you? Here I was thinking she was a poor little winged songbird, struggling to understand what real love is after her bastard husband an’ only being able to love a horrid prick like you,” She threw in his face and snorted as his expression flickered, “And you.... you agree with me. You think her love of you is a mistake because...because look at you. You’re an angry brute who is ugly as sin and would butcher anyone if given the order.” 

His lips pulled back and his teeth glinted in the light as he reminded her, “I’ve killed smarter women for dumber thoughts.” 

“You’re doing this to her because no one hates The Hound more than Sandor Clegane,” Arna tore into him triumphantly. 

He walked away from her, turning his back and lumbering away. Almost fizzing with elated realization, she gathered her skirts and gave chase. 

“Listen, you ox - you can fix this,” She said as she reached his elbow and he cursed at her as he unlatched and wrenched the Commons door open. He strode through, not holding the door and causing her to scurry after him as he all but avoided her. 

“I _ am _ fixing it. And once I have, mayhaps I’ll do as you wished and fuck off,” He told her shortly and Arna’s mouth dropped open and she grabbed at his sleeve. He slapped her hands away with another curse and kept walking. 

“No, wait! What do you mean? I was being...Gods help me with you, you mangy cunt, stop!” She grabbed the back of his furs and threw her weight backwards, digging her heels into the flagstone and being dragged a few feet before he turned around in anger and yanked himself free. 

“I’ve one chance at this and you’re ruining it, you quivering bint. I don’t have _ time _. Once I do this, it’s up to Sansa and she can tell me what she wants me to do. Leave or stay,” He told her and Arna balked audibly until he whirled on her and grabbed her by the shoulders. 

She squeaked but his gaze was distant and vacant, like he was listening to something inside his own skull. She could almost see the whirring and warring pieces notching and unnotching in place as his mind raced. He looked consumed and concerned as he finally focused on her, pupils dilating down to finally see her. 

He gave her a solid shake and nodded to himself as he declared, “You’re going to help me.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can apologize until I'm blue in the face but that doesn't fix my posting schedule so please take this chapter as my sacrificial lamb. 
> 
> enjoy arna kicking some ass and know that this is like my other longer-form stories and i'll try to wrap all this angst up with a sappy fluffy bow. promise.
> 
> xoxo


	6. Settle

Even though she felt more rested than she had in months, waking from her late afternoon nap and seeing the darkened sky outside didn’t bolster her spirits. 

All day Sansa had half hoped for a heavy knock on the door, for a passionate apology and gotten none. 

The rest of her was just sore – there was no other word for it. Emotionally, she was wrung out. She’d gone from believing him dead, to being elated he wasn’t and frantic with excitement, to horror and sadness. Finally, she felt the worst emotion she could handle. 

She’d first experienced it trying so hard to be what Joffrey wanted and would love.    
Then she’d tried with Petyr, to be the darling daughter to a man who only saw a shadow of his only love. And finally, with Ramsay, who had cruelly used and tortured her to his own end and had no love. 

Rejection. 

It wasn’t something Sansa had ever handled well; spats between children in the castle growing up had always sent her howling to her mother. The adults had always seemed to live in a world of proper rules and decorum and she was often robbed of that by the savagery of other kids, no matter how old she tried to act. 

Becoming an adult and being rejected by people she didn’t even love heaped heavier on her soul. 

But to have Sandor, the one person whom she let in and she thought saw her, reject her? Not only her, but their baby? One they had made in what was the only night of pleasure she’d ever had? 

She was once more not good enough. Or, rather, too good. Too good for him to associate with. 

Either way, she was alone. 

Sansa shoved the mashed potatoes on her plate around miserably with her fork. Her hand dropped to her lap and cradled the bump that had been increasingly artfully hidden under her dresses and robes. Very soon it would be too obvious to hide and she rubbed it almost consolingly – for herself or the baby she didn’t know. She just knew that at this point, all the babe had was her and all she had was the babe. 

As sore as her heart was, she knew when it came to  it she’d survive.

Not for her, but for her son or daughter. 

As such, all of her dreams recently had shown her a boy. A handsome pudgy boy with big blue eyes and a shock of  jet-black hair. In her dreams everyone compliments her on his Stark  colouring and Tully eyes. Even as he grows big and strong as a tree, they’d all say it was the Stark in him. She’d yet to begin whispering about names with  Arna , but the thoughts entered her head while sitting in court or replying to ravens in her study. 

If Sandor didn’t want to be a father, so be it. 

If he didn’t want to be with her, that hurt more than anything else but that was also his choice. 

He’d never promised to do anything than protect her anyway. It was her folly falling in love with him, letting him have her and letting him make a home in her head and heart. It was her folly for letting his seed take root in her, not drinking moon tea in her daze following his departure with the army. 

No wonder so many farmer’s wives had new young for their husbands to meet shortly after a war. 

Perhaps marrying a Lord she didn’t love with all her heart already  _ was _ the answer. 

To save herself, her child and her sanity. How could she carry his child in her body and her arms and walk past him on a daily basis as he did his duties and not weep for him to reach out to her? Not beg him to hold their child, smile down at it? How could he be so cruel - not to her, but to a baby? At the very least, she had to protect the child from feeling like a bastard; an unwanted mistake. 

Tears pricked at her eyes and she wrapped her arms around herself as she stared into the fire. 

No doubt she’d lay on her front and be taken by her Lord husband and she’d think of him. She’d long for the fire, long for the desire. She’d hate him for showing her what she could have had and then denied her. 

Sansa didn’t want to hate him but she felt like she had no choice. 

Hate was the only thing past love and she couldn’t stop loving him, as much as she begged herself to. He’d been in her head and heart for longer than she would ever admit – her fear of his size had somehow turned into awe of it and then later of him. She thought of him in ways she didn’t know were possible before she knew what they were and her body had reacted to him throughout her life in ways she knew her Septa would have rapped her knuckles for. 

She was chewing through the skin on the edge of her thumb when there was a knock at the door. 

“Come in,” She called gently and the door opened and shut itself. 

Arna bustled around her chair and clucked her tongue at the food still on Sansa’s plate. 

“The kitchens closed about an hour ago but I can see if there’s something more to your liking...” She began and Sansa shook her head and sighed. 

“No, thank-you. I’m simply not hungry.” 

“Ah. I hate to be a pest but...you’re needed, Your Grace. Your men returned with the person they’ve been trackin’ in the woods the last few days. He’s taken the Black and abandoned,” Arna told her. Sansa frowned as she considered. 

“All things being, is it still an offense punishable by death?” 

“I wouldn’t know, Your Grace. That’s for you to talk to the lad and decide.” 

“He’s young then?” She asked and Arna inclined her head side-to-side.

“Can’t be more than a score and four,” She surmised and Sansa slowly rose from her seat. She was dressed for the day still, an activity she’d embarked upon earlier before settling into a sobbing nap and she smoothed her hands over the wrinkled skirts. 

“Let’s go then,” She sighed and  Arna all but darted to get her cloak. When the furs were draped around her shoulders and the maid bent to lace up her boots, Sansa fixed the clasp and ran a brush through her hair. A glance in her looking glass showed a wan, pale face that she arranged into a prim expression. Once  Arna opened the door and curtsied her through, they were off. 

“They didn’t just leave them in the Hunter’s yard, did they?”

“No, I believe  Cormant wanted them in the  Godswood my lady,” Arna said with a hint of question in her voice and Sansa nodded sagely as they descended some stairs. 

“Wise. It’s late, we can avoid a commotion in the Godswood,” Sansa said and hardened herself. If this boy was a murderer or rapist as well as a defective craven, she would have no choice but to call for steel. She’d have to hold her guts down if she beheaded him but knew this was part and parcel of her station. Judge, jury and executioner. 

They approached the  Godswood doors and  Arna dropped back, Sansa turning to her questioningly. 

“I’m sorry, my lad- Your Grace. I haven’t the stomach for the blood of death, should it come to that. I’ll see to it your room is prepped for bed?  Cormant will meet you outside,” She asked pleadingly and Sansa felt for her. While she had no choice as Queen, the woman had no reason to be forced to watch. 

“Of course, how thoughtful. Thank-you,” Sansa dismissed her and watched her excuse herself with another curtsey and then disappear up the stairs they’d just come down. Sansa glanced at one of the guards, who stepped forward. He had a large bruise blossoming on the side of his face and faint reddish beard but he opened the door solemnly and bowed her through as she murmured her thanks. 

The Godswood was dark, but she could see some faint light through the trees. 

“Your Grace,” A voice came from her left and Sansa started suddenly as  Cormant bled from the darkness. He appeared to be resigned to the situation as she was and had put a long formal cloak over what she could only assume were bedclothes, given the hour. 

“Terribly sorry to wake you for this,” Sansa apologized and the man scoffed as he grasped her shoulders gently and said, “By your side, my Queen.” 

His fingers felt the robe and he pulled at it, causing her to pause. He shook his head and produced a fine roll from within his robes. 

“This is more fitting for the situation. You will look the woman you are,” He told her haughtily as he threw it atop the thicker black cloak she wore. It was thinner but very fine and shone brightly in the dim light, like the finest silks she’d seen in King’s Landing. It was trimmed with laid rabbit, white furs tinted with streaks of greys and browns to texturize the collar. He incorporated her clasp from the cloak underneath, pinning the two together with her snarling  wolfshead pin. 

“ Cormant , this is beautiful; we cannot be seen to celebrate,” Sansa balked and he shook his head twice before offering her his arm. 

“Nonsense. Shall a man lose his head, it will comfort him the person sending him likened an angel,” He told her confidently and that did little to erase the fine line that furrowed between her brows as they moved slowly through the snow and trees. As they walked, something built in her chest. 

The trees were dark and voluminous and she spied lights through the branches. Faint, warm candlelight by which she would make the decision to end a life. She did her best not to tremor as they moved, despite realizing the irony of being a pregnant woman ordering a man killed. Something in her was trying to be strong and be the Queen they all thought her – to be satisfied with  Cormant at her elbow for support and guidance. 

Even though in truth, she wanted to turn tail and run through the castle until she was in Sandor’s quarters wrapped in his arms. His heavy step behind her would prop up her failing bravado and the weight of his eyes would anchor her to her duty more than the ghost of her Father could. She wanted to spread her palm on her belly and consciously decided against it; she could draw none of Sandor’s strength from his child as much as she could draw her own and would only attract the eye to it. 

The path curved and they followed it dutifully before rounding the corner. The clearing was brighter and steam wicked off the coursing eddies of the hot pools to their right, waters black and mysterious in the darkness. The area at the foot of the Heart Tree was ringed with large candles that had been buried in the snow, casting an ethereal glow to the ground. Hastily tied ropes dangled more candles in lanterns above them from the lowermost branches of the tree, cascading the soft flickering light as if there were magic orbs descending around their heads. Above them, the sky was an inky splay of glittering gems that shimmered and sparkled like excited beetles. 

In the center of the circle at the foot of the tree was Sandor Clegane. His hair had been washed and brushed and he was freshly shaved, the unburned part of his jaw red with  razorwork . He was wearing all black and somehow found a great black cloak that was finely lined with a fabric as yellow as spring flowers.

Sansa stopped with an audible gasp, looking around the clearing in confusion and awe. 

Cormant stepped away, patting her forearm affably as he did so and Sansa’s gaze fell from the candles above her to the nervously shifting tree of a man before her. 

“Sandor  wh -what is going on?” 

He was staring at her, his eyes tight and sorrowful and she watched his fingers fidget before he opened his mouth and shut it again, struggling. Dread pulsed deep in her belly and she chewed her lower lip as he opened his mouth again.

“He's trying to say sorry,” A voice said from behind her and Sansa spun around with a start as another person shifted from the shadows and entered the ring of candlelight. The twinkle in his eyes was only enhanced by the lights around them and Sansa’s knees almost gave out as she recognized the dark curly hair and heavy brow. 

“ _ Jon _ ,” The word had barely hissed from her mouth before she threw herself on him as if they’d been separated half their lives once more. He returned the gesture, arms wrapping tight around her and eventually fixing a brotherly kiss to her temple before he released her and stepped back, suddenly chuckling. 

“You’ve been thinner than a sheet all your life, who are you fooling with this...tent scheme?” He commented and Sansa choked on her own tongue, unconsciously clutching at her belly in front of her as she inhaled sharply and looked from him to Sandor. The burned man managed to look sheepish and shrugged one shoulder at her before she looked at Jon in shock. 

“Who - you know? When did you get here? Why are you here? When did you – did Sandor -?” She sputtered over the deluge of questions that tried to stuff themselves out her mouth all at once and Jon laughed at her, guiding her towards the tree. 

“I tried to be here for your coronation. I wanted to see it – after all, Queen Sansa tormented me my entire childhood,” He ribbed her and Sansa’s cheeks pinked with the usual shame the came with remembering their interactions as children. Jon, as always, seemed to look on it fondly now.

“I’m much nicer and you know it,” She sniffed as they approached the tree. She stopped in front of Sandor shyly, finding his brown eyes filled with something she didn’t recognize – perhaps a mixture of affection, hope, remorse, anxiety. Jon stepped back to her left and looked between them.

He coughed as he glanced at Sandor and said, “As I was saying, he has words.” 

Sansa looked at Sandor wonderingly, confused but happy and their war from earlier almost all but forgotten. The space the row had wrought between them was almost measurable as he let out a lousy exhale and looked at the ground. 

“Fear isn’t something I deal with. Fear doesn’t get me paid or let me sleep at night. I was... afraid earlier for...for you, for the...for our babe,” He swallowed thickly and Sansa’s throat closed at the sight of him struggling to string together his feelings. The word ‘our’, the acknowledgment, nearly made her dizzy with happiness she didn’t understand. He huffed at himself and glanced up at the tree above them before back down at her, spearing her with the sudden clarity and determination in them. 

“Your brother has made me Lord Clegane, against my better wishes. Lord of my family’s blasted Keep and the village of...couple  someodd score of peasants,” He told her and Sansa blinked owlishly as he heaved another great sigh.

“Smallfolk,” Sansa corrected absently in a tiny voice as she gawked at him in astonishment. He didn’t seem to hear or care about the correction as he glanced at Jon, who raised his eyebrows in a silent prompt that Sansa missed. 

“I’m sorry, Little Bird. I said I’d never hurt you and then I go and do that, like an animal. You were right to be afraid, right to be happy. You’re doing the right thing by – by our child and I’ve been a coward because of it,” He admitted to her and looked down at his boots miserably. Jon nodded and then turned his head to Sansa. 

“I don’t want to force you-,” She began in a thick, tremulous voice and Sandor swooped forward to grasp her hands, bringing them up between them to kiss her gathered thumbs.   
  
“You can’t force the willing, Sansa. I did wrong by panicking about your station and... I will admit, I wasn’t expecting you to be with child. That doesn’t change anything though, it never has. It’s always been you. I’ve...I love you,” He finally managed, the words seemingly foreign and strange on his tongue. 

Tears did fall then – the gathered water in the corners of her eyes rolled down her cheeks as quickly as a smile appeared on her lips. She laughed through a sob that took hold of her and tried covering her mouth with the back of her hand as he reached forward and pulled her into a hug. 

He pulled back to gaze into her face for a moment, the burned corner of his mouth twitching. Sansa smiled at him, chest full of an expansive feeling of gratitude and happiness that was slowly swallowing her whole. It felt like sunlight on a face that had been in a cell for too long. 

“I’d do anything you ask of me, title or not. Even now, I don’t have much. It’s a keep a quarter size of this place, with skinnier people and fucking terrible weather but I’ll be Lord of it... if I can be with you,” He admitted reluctantly and Jon nodded at him in approval, unseen by both. 

“Is that what this is?” Sansa whispered wetly. Sandor’s expression screwed into one of determination as he slowly sunk down onto one knee in front of her. A strangled sob broke from behind the hand covering Sansa’s mouth as he took her hand in his and looked up at her. 

“Will you be my wife?” 

All she could manage was a nod before she descended upon him, hands clapped to the side of his face as she kissed him passionately. Sandor swayed with the impact and kissed her back as best he could while rising back to a stand, arms cinched tight around her waist. Jon waited until they pulled apart before he interjected himself. 

“That’s why he let me into the castle,” He volunteered good-naturedly. 

“You’re going to witness us?” She asked him incredulously.

“Your  Maester agreed to send a raven about a wedding. I suppose with the ways things have played out, Bran -,” Jon started but Sandor interrupted dispassionately. 

“The cripple has been pulling all the strings. Figured we’d give him what he wants.”

“Don’t call him a cripple, Bran can go places we can only dream. He wants what’s best for us,” Sansa rebuked gently and both men shot a look at one another over her shoulder. 

“As far as we’re concerned, he wanted me in the castle to see you married. Cormant?” Jon finished the line of questioning for her and waved a hand at the sparkling candles littering the area around them. Sansa blushed and glanced nervously at Sandor as she did so before she nodded. 

Cormant formally walked between everyone, positioning himself facing them in front of the tree as Jon dropped back to stand behind Sansa to her left. Sandor’s hands came out and turned palms up – Sansa answered by slipping hers into his with her palms down and squeezing gently.

“Who comes before the Old Gods tonight?”  Cormant started boldly, his proclamation strong and even. It carried out under the branches and rang clear in the darkened night. The leaves above seemed to rush and sway in a gentle breeze, a calamity of nature’s clapping. 

Sansa shook as she waited. The words last said by Theon Greyjoy, in far worse conditions, came out of Jon’s mouth behind her. 

“Sansa, of House Stark, comes here to be wed. A woman grown, trueborn and noble and on the brink of motherhood. She comes to beg the greatest blessing of the Gods. Who comes to claim her?” 

“Sandor, of House Clegane, the second dog, only son and heir to Clegane’s Keep,” Sandor rasped as he peered down at Sansa’s warm smile. “Who gives her?” 

“Jon, of House Stark and Targaryen, her cousin by blood and brother by heart,” Jon replied proudly from behind her and fresh tears blurred her vision as her affection for him ballooned in her heart. Sandor’s hands squeezed hers reassuringly and she felt the broad pad of his thumb swipe across her knuckles in consolation. 

Cormant bowed to both of them before leaning forward to address her, the faint lights reflected magically in his eyes.

“My lovely Lady Sansa, do you take this man as your husband from now until death?” 

Her fingers tremored in his giant hands as she grinned prettily and said, “Yes, of course.” 

“Then by the grace of the Old Gods and the dignity of the New, you are bound,” Cormant clapped his hands together and stepped back with a rare smile gracing his normally thin lips. 

The kiss Sandor delivered to her was triumphant and victorious. Sansa smiled against his mouth as she returned it, wrapping her arms around his neck and giggling as he lifted her off the ground. When he released her, she caught a dazed, exalted look on his face even as he stepped back and addressed the other two men. 

“Thanks for your help, now bugger off,” He told them and Sansa hissed his name in admonishment, even as Jon smirked and  Cormant rolled his eyes. They turned and set off together, Jon making comments about liking a room close to the baths. Sansa watched the dark man go with trepidation, not wanting to be separated from him so soon. 

“He’s to have a wedded breakfast with us,” Sandor murmured in her ear as they started to follow the retreating backs, seemingly reading her racing thoughts. She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm and dropped her forehead against the bulk of his bicep. Her ears seemed to be filled with cotton and her skin prickled like she’d just escaped certain death.

“I can’t believe what just happened,” She answered incredulously and Sandor let out a chuckle that sounded from somewhere deep in his chest. 

“ _ You _ can’t? I just married a fucking Queen.”

“Now you have a Queen to fuck,” Sansa whispered to him under her breath and his sudden bark of laughter made both Jon and  Cormant glance behind them briefly in question. Sandor waved them off while Sansa tried to tame her smile as he muttered to her. 

“Aye, you’re my wife.”

“I am, aren’t I?” Sansa agreed with him as they approached the doors back into the castle. Cormant was giving instructions, describing and directing the ways of the castle in the manner one does when they’ve forgotten the person they’re speaking to grew up there. Jon, for his part, patiently waited and even held the door open for Sandor and Sansa to parade through. The guards flanking the doors were gone and only a few of the braziers on the walls were lit, casting long shadows. 

Both Jon and  Cormant turned to them, pausing for a moment as they regarded them. Sansa smiled brilliantly, seemingly bouncing on the balls of her feet as she tugged on Sandor’s arm, her hand swallowed completely in his. Jon shook his head as he smiled to himself on their approach. 

“Never would have thought it but I don’t think I could have chosen better,” He said to Sansa who engaged him in another long hug. When she detangled herself, Jon offered his hand which Sandor took. They shook warmly as Sandor clapped him on the shoulder. 

“She wants you at breakfast,” Sandor told him and Sansa nodded in agreement. 

“Pig sausage is my favourite, so I’ll take you up on that,” He agreed before he nodded once more to them and turned to follow Cormant, who had bowed off and was loitering near the hallway to take Jon to his room. 

Just like that, they were gone and Sandor glanced at Sansa as she started towards the stairs. 

“I should...follow you?” 

“Your rooms are my rooms now, husband,” Sansa teased him and watched the one cheek that could blush slowly turn red. He shook his head, despite the half-cocked smile on his face as he allowed her to pull him up the stairs. 

“It’s against the wind that it’s that easy. All the rules and regulations in place that can be spat on by four people under a fucking tree and no one can say anything about it,” He said wonderingly to her and Sansa agreed. 

“Marriage as a rule seems highly suspect. I’m not to be alone with you until we kiss in front of the Gods and then...we’re allowed total and complete freedom,” She giggled with him as they paraded up yet another set of stairs. 

“And yet, you go to your wedding bed already with child,” He sighed dramatically and Sansa gave him a needling look that he returned with a slight smirk. As they rounded the corner to spy the doors to Sansa’s quarters, they found  Arna waiting anxiously in the hall outside. 

“Arna! You sneak – you were in on this as well!” Sansa suddenly called out to her joyously and the maid had the temerity to blush deeply as the Queen swept forward and bustled her into an over-familiar hug that they exchanged tightly. 

“I’ll report to  Cormant for punishment at first light, Your Grace,”  Arna told her as Sansa laughed and released her. The redhead’s bright eyes positively sparkled in the low light as  Arna gestured towards the door, bobbing short curtsey as she said, “Hopefully it’s to your liking. I didn’t have a lot of time so I only did what I could.” 

Sansa hadn’t even walked in before she gasped and exclaimed, “Oh,  Arna ! You shouldn’t have!” 

The room had no fire burning in the grate, but tall glass flutes and bowls littered every surface with white and yellow candles lit and winking sweetly. The four-poster bed had had its hangings changed to a sheer, gauzy white material and the bed itself was plushily packed with white pillows, pressed white cotton sheets and a large snow-white fox fur blanket. 

A small table at the foot of the bed was laden with wide gold bowls of grapes and some impossibly green apples. A cutting board was prepped with a thick wedge of goat cheese, some dark rye bread and a gold-handled cheese knife. It was all guarded by a crystal decanter of what looked like a deep red wine and two matching flutes. 

Sansa was wandering around the apartment with her mouth open in awe, fingers trailing over the furniture as if she’d never seen it before. The excitement on her face was one of pure girlish happiness and Sandor smiled proudly. 

“We’ll see you on the morrow, Your Grace,”  Arna curtsied as she excused herself and made to leave the room. Her dark eyes caught Sandor as she walked by him and she paused long enough to say, “Clegane.”

“Maid,” He replied stiffly and that seemed to satisfy her as she finally left the room, closing the door behind her with a soft thump. 

A sharp ring made him whip his head around and find Sansa lifting the stopper out of the decanter, sniffing the contents daintily before pouring them both a glass. Not wanting to sit on the bed like he was expectant, Sandor sank gently onto the small sofa by the fire. He unclasped his own cloak and threw it from his shoulders with a loud sigh and watched Sansa do the same with not one, but two cloaks she was apparently wearing. She folded them neatly over the back of a chair before she went to claim the two glasses and approached him, offering him one that he took quizzically. The crystal was fine and delicate, picking up the faint rivets of light cast from everywhere in the room. The contents of the glass would be a single swallow for him but he obediently followed Sansa’s lead as she tilted the rim of hers and gently clinked them together. She raised it and murmured, “To marriage.” 

“And coyotes,” Sandor replied and she gave a short, inelegant snort as they drank. She’d only lowered the level on hers but Sandor’s was drained and set aside before he reached for her, pulling her down onto his lap. She settled gently and took another drink as his hand moved of its own volition and possessively covered the swell of her belly. They both watched, heads bowed together as he rotated his palm and smoothed over it from the top to the bottom. 

“You’re bigger than you look,” He admitted eventually and to his surprise, Sansa nodded proudly. 

“He’s a big boy,” She told him with a smile in her voice, her own hand covering Sandor’s as he absently rubbed her. He craned his neck to look at her suspiciously. 

“Boy?” 

“Mmm.”

“How do you figure?” 

“Dreams. How I’m carrying him. When he moves – I can’t explain it, I just know. I know him,” She explained fiercely as she leaned over to put her flute down. Sandor snorted. 

“Sounds like insanity from the local witch,” He told her and Sansa shook her head as she laughed quietly at him while she watched him scrutinize her middle. He studied her as if he would be able to see through her into her womb. 

“My mother was a Tully. They’re said to be the witches of childbirth.”

“Told you it sounded like hag’s advice.” 

“I’d rather a hags help than a soldiers,” Sansa told him off with a giggle as she stuck her face in his and kissed the side of his nose. A dumb look of love climbed onto his features and their conversation was forgotten as they got lost in looking at one another inches apart, Sansa’s fingers stroking the side of Sandor’s face gently. 

“I love you,” She whispered at him and his pupils seemed to flare in response to her words. 

“I’ll never get used to that,” He told her wonderingly and allowed her to lean over and capture his lips with hers. She kissed him slowly and ardently, like she was taking her time savoring a rare sweet from Dorne. Her lips lingered on his even when she released him from the pressure of the kiss. Then, she stood up and put her back to him before casting him a coy look over her shoulder. 

“Release me from these confines, good ser,” She requested of him and he smirked at the  _ ser _ . Normally he would have balked but the teasing in her voice and promise of nudity kept him obedient and attentive as he leaned forwards and reached up, gently lifting the fabric panel and popping the buttons free as he’d once done long ago. He watched the sliver of pale skin on her neck deepen and ever so slowly, widen. The lower he undid the buttons, the more of her fine velvety skin he got to see. He was close enough to press a few kisses to her spine, causing her to wiggle and gasp as he inhaled her skin and the sweet, sharp scent of her. She still smelled like Sansa and... something else. Something sweeter, where it hadn’t been before. 

“You smell like peaches that’ve been ripening on a vine in the sun,” He groaned into the small of her back and his ears memorized the tinkering laugh that she let out above him. She wiggled about and the material bagged at the waist, bunching bluntly as she freed her top half and used one hand to tug listlessly at the rest. Sandor gathered the material in his paws, catching her glance as she peered over her shoulder. 

“You want these down?” 

“Please don’t -,” Her plea was cut off as he gave a perfunctory yank, “ _ rip _ them, Sandor.” 

“I didn’t rip anything,” He protested as she made a noise of annoyance and stepped out of the mound of black cloth. Her undershirt was missing and all she wore were some soft looking underpants that fell to the knee – her lovely calves were encased in thick wool stockings from there. 

It was when she turned around that the words pooled in his mouth and threatened to drip down his front. Lit from all angles by the softly dancing light, her pale skin positively glowed. She had one thin arm across her breasts modestly, even as she bent slightly to look down at the seams of her dress and admonish him for ruining a frock with a built-in something or other. He wasn’t listening; her breasts were only contained by Sansa’s sheer practice and the divine will of sadistic Gods – they threatened to spill over or under her arm from both sides and looked like they would almost fill his palms. They were atop her belly – so white and surprisingly round. The small swell that he’d felt under his palm looked higher and rounder and bigger to the naked eye. It almost looked a trick, a freakish display of such full life on her thin frame. He could see the faint blue and green lines stretching their way under her skin across her breasts. Faint stripes appeared on either side of her bellybutton, which looked to be under pressure to remain affixed. The frilled underpants looked to barely hang on to her as the press of the child hung low and wide on her hips. 

“Sorry, I -” She started but he hissed at her when she made to cover herself, moving her hands away to continue looking at her. He couldn’t form the words for the pounding in his head and chest and ears. She was a vision and this was the first time he was feeling that way towards a pregnant woman. She had changed so much and only stood to change more – all to create his child. 

“Sandor,” Sansa called after a moment of his ogling, her cheeks turning bright red as she said, “This is hardly becoming. I’ll lay on the bed.”

“Becoming?” He echoed dumbly as he met her eye and let her see the seriousness of the emotions soaring through his chest in that moment, “You don’t need to be  _ becoming _ . You’re beautiful. You’re...”

“Tired?” She guessed at him with a smile and he gave her an indignant look. 

“You’re growing a child.  _ My _ child –  _ our child _ . Gods fucking help me, you’re making a Prince or a Princess,” He replied to her as he moved her arm from across her chest and filled his hands with the soft, warm flesh of her breasts as he groaned again and exclaimed, “And  _ these!”  _

Her breathless laugh devolved into a short squeal as his face fell down and buried itself in her neck, smelling her wolfishly and manipulating her nipples. He kissed at her clavicles and laved the fine bones with his tongue as Sansa’s joking giggles turned into a stilted moan and she lifted her chest higher to meet his mouth as he tasted and licked lower. His hands slid around her back, finding and gathering the flesh of her rear and squeezing with enthusiasm. The undergarments that had struggled so valiantly gave up their fight and he pushed them down her legs unceremoniously. Sansa’s head tilted back and he could hear and feel the silent laughter she rocked with as he gathered her tighter against him and stood to his full height to seal his mouth over hers. When he released her, her palms flattened against his chest and pressed him back, much to his confusion. 

Sansa stepped away, blue eyes alight with the fire of mischief as she walked to the bed and got up onto it, making a show of peeling the wool socks off. She gave him a full view of her rear end and its new red marks from his fingers as she lay on the bed, rolling onto her left side and propping her head up cheekily with one arm as she openly surveyed him. He was so engrossed in watching her move it took him a second to register her smirk was aimed at him. 

“Where did you get the cloak?” Sansa asked him, voice laced with teasing and suggestion. His brain floundered for a minute before he glanced back at the splash of yellow splayed where he’d left it on the couch. 

“Uh - had the bolt of colour for most of my life? Cloak was made in Wintertown somewhere,” He guessed out loud and gave her a sheepish one-shouldered shrug. 

“And the shirt?” 

His gaze fell to the fine black cloth covering his chest. Absently, his hands came up and started on the four buttons lining the neck. His mouth went dry as he noticed her eyes flare and the crystal blue darken to oceanic in the space of a heartbeat. He cottoned on to the game with the sharpness of a man used to small details. 

“Had it a bit. Custom made in King’s Landing for some funeral event,” He recalled as the buttons were undone and he reached down to pull the material from his waistband. Then, it all went over his head and was tossed towards the mound of Sansa’s dress. 

He liked the open predation on her face, the way her eyes followed his arms and consumed the skin he exposed. In response, his flesh puckered into thousands of illicit goosebumps. 

“Your boots? Very fine,” Sansa commented coyly and he couldn’t resist grinning at her as she pulled the corner of her lower lip under her top teeth and bit down. He reached behind him and straight down, lifting the leg up at the knee to jerk his first foot free. Once both were off, he lifted them haphazardly for her and her growing smile. 

“They’re...boots. Leather. Made somewhere in the Riverlands. Good for floods,” He explained and fixed her with a false scowl when she covered the small laugh that escaped. She tilted her head in reply, canting her body so he had a clear view of the long, curving line of her hips and chest. The small baby bump was half buried in bedding and her naked breast taunted him invitingly. One glance at her face said she knew what he was admiring as he was doing it. Her eyes fell heavily over his groin, caressing the skin along the top of his hips with her eyes. 

“Finely spun pants I’d say,” Sansa hinted and he huffed out a shaky breath in place of a snorting laugh. She watched with open interest as he undid the lacings and the single  buttonloop . He allowed the loosened material to slip down over his rear, holding the crotch of the pants up over himself insolently. Sansa’s gaze met his and he jerked his chin up at her in a false challenge. 

“I’ll keep my honor. Ladies show their bits first,” He claimed and the way her eyebrows went up incredulously almost made him laugh. He could feel the corner of his mouth twitching, giving him away. Sansa sat up, tucking her legs underneath her and rising to her knees – much to his admiration. 

“And fall for that trick again? Allow you to force your face between my legs?”

He grinned wolfishly at the memory as he took a step towards the base of the bed and replied, “If you’d like.” 

“Nay, you’re but an innocent greenhorn, you just said yourself. I wouldn’t  _ dare  _ violate such a precious, delicate disposition,” Sansa intoned in a falsely coquettish, breathless fashion as she settled back on the bed and slipped her legs out in front of her again. His remaining eyebrow quirked sharply as he watched her fine, pale hands snaking up her torso. They slid over her belly and tickled her ribs and cupped the sensuous flesh of her breasts, toying with the newly dark pink nipples until they hardened. 

Sansa’s eyes met his as she turned her head on the bed and he could see the gleam in them as he stood at the foot of the bed all but panting. She spread her legs and Sandor swallowed thickly as he watched the same hands slid between her thighs, delving into her sex. Then, she closed her eyes and her chest heaved off the bed towards the ceiling as she let out a long, dripping moan. 

“Fucking hells, you win the game,” He rasped coarsely as he dropped his pants and crawled up the foot of the bed, eyes fixed on her like a hound after a fox. 

Her giggle turned into a short squeal as he covered her body with his in a sweeping motion and sucked her nipple into his mouth like a starving man. His hands roamed over her blindly, teasing and squeezing everything that he could reach with his lips and tongue. Sansa sang him a chorus of sighs and gasps, twitching and jerking in his arms as he touched and kissed and licked everything he liked. He worried a mark onto her clavicles and he discovered the ribs directly under her breasts liked to be gently tested with his teeth, if Sansa’s loud moan and sharp goosebumps were any indication. 

Eventually her hands found his face and clamped around his ears, forcibly dragging him up her body to lock his lips with hers. His knuckles brushed her sex between her legs and she made a noise of surprise that he answered by repeating the motion with a throaty growl. Sansa detangled herself for air and gasped, “Why should I suffer to wait any longer?” 

“Poetry and songs, even while begging for a cock,” He rumbled at her and Sansa reached between them to slip her fingers around the hard length of him, stroking him inexpertly but pointedly as she met Sandor’s eyes with her own.

“I should just command you to satisfy me?” She challenged him. His response was a smirk as he rolled onto the bed beside her, pulling her back until she all but rested on his chest. His hand ran down her hip and over her leg, gripping the top of the meat of her thigh and pulling it across his hip, splaying her open. He kissed up her shoulder and the slope of her neck, hovering just under her ear. 

“You could command I satisfy you under the table while you receive court,” He whispered to her as his hand mimicked hers, sliding down over her mons pubis and cupping the curls of her slit possessively. Sansa shivered against him and he watched her nipples harden further with interest. 

“You could command I have you in the  Godswood pools,” He continued as he slipped a finger through her folds, coursing it through the wakening wetness as she sighed shakily and her eyes slipped closed. Her own hands bunched the sheet under her or gripped the bone of his hip tightly, like she was afraid to fall off the bed. Sandor allowed himself a carnal impulse and bit the top of her shoulder, his cock throbbing when she moaned in response. 

“You could command I have you in the shadows of the hallways,” He rasped as gently as he could as he found the soft nub that made her jerk and sigh in his arms. He pulsed the pad of his finger on it and wiggled it back and forth experimentally. He resisted the urge to plunge his fingers into her heat, so inviting and accessible. The same unbelievable slickness that he’d experienced before coated his fingers and it was all he could do not to roll his hips against the round of her bottom. 

“You could command I satisfy you in the window seat right there,” He suggested and watched a smile bleed onto her face as she hummed and ground against his hand. He resumed his movements and tried his best to focus on keeping his pattern steady as she whimpered and rocked her hips. He nuzzled her neck and kissed the side of her jaw and snuck his other hand around her shoulders to fondle her breast as she keened at the ceiling. The candlelight surrounding the bed cast a golden glow over them and he marveled at the press of her skin against his – the soft,  ethereal paleness clashing with the sun-weathered shade of himself; moonlight on sandstone. 

“ Mmm , how about I command you satisfy me now,” Sansa requested throatily as she half-opened her eyes. Her smile was lazy and lustful and made something in his heart shiver with joy. He chuckled and flicked his finger over the soft bud he was playing with, making her mewl at him. 

“Am I not?” He teased her and she huffed at him. 

“You know what I want,” Sansa all but pouted and Sandor chuckled as he hooked two fingers and sunk them deeply into her. He withdrew them only to push them in again, soaking himself up to the knuckles. When the noise of what he was doing reached her ears, he watched her brow wrinkle. Sandor hoisted her thigh up again and shifted his hips behind her, angling himself. He joined with her with one smooth thrust and Sansa’s throaty cry smothered the growl that escaped his clenched teeth. She was so wet and warm, encasing him. Sandor greedily pushed himself as deeply as he could, dropping his forehead against the top of her shoulder. 

He began to lose control as she shifted and swiveled, chirping little sighs and egging him on. 

“Yes, Sandor. Yes,”  Sansa chanted as he took a second to pant and run his hands up and down her hips and thighs, trying to buy himself the clarity he needed. Instead, the feel of her ribs and hips and thighs running under his palms and her sighing and writhing like a river fish proved to be overwhelming. He belatedly grabbed at her hips, lifting her slightly to give him the space to drive up into her powerfully. He followed his pleasure, sinking in and out of her and watching her mouth open and close as she tried her best to keep his gaze and drag her fingers over the skin of his arms. 

Her breath hissed through her teeth and she began to whine in time with his thrusts, her eyes finally closing and her head pressing back into the pillow as he gratefully picked up the pace. Her arm reached up over her head and behind her, finding his scalp and threading her digits through his hair. When Sandor snuck a hand back between her legs and began to repeat his earlier  ministrations , she gave him her greatest gift. 

“Oh  _ fuck _ , yes,” Sansa gasped raggedly and undulated her hips as he moved in her deeply, mouthing and licking at the join of her shoulder. His own groans were getting louder and more breathless as he chased his peak, his fingers digging divots into her skin where he clamped down. Sansa spasmed and with a ruined gasp managed to choke his name before dissolving into a series of small, stilted moans. Sandor’s groan rumbled in his chest as he reveled in the fresh gush of wetness as she came apart beside him. Almost immediately once she stopped thrashing, he selfishly rolled her onto her side, throwing her knee in front of her and pounding into her from behind and above her. Empowered by the position, his thrusts became erratic and frantic. Sandor’s own noises sounded pained as he wound a handful of her beautiful red hair around his fist and pulled her head back, driven over by the way her throat flexed as she moaned at the sensation. 

His mind went white and his ears silent as he orgasmed, a sharp grunt torn from his throat. Once the sensation of weightlessness ebbed, he collapsed beside her panting heavily as his muscles shivered and twitched in the aftermath. His brain felt like sea foam, bubbly and bright and fathomless as he wrapped his arms around her body and held her close to him. 

They lay quietly for a while, listening to each other’s breathing and their heartbeats slowing. It was when the air of the room began to coldly kiss their skin that Sandor sat up and grasped the furs to throw them over both of them. When he settled beside her again, his contented growl was possessive when he pulled her against him. Sansa’s answering sigh was a  balm on a wound almost as old as he was. Her instinctive burrowing against his chest made him feel like he was the shield he was meant to be. The dog protecting the little bird, his only love and unlikely friend. 

He could see them, him and Sansa – this overpowering, unstoppable, answerable feeling would age like fine wine. He longed for the love the old men at firesides spoke of their wives with; longing, affable affection, strong determination. Before Sansa, he’d only fought to get paid and get noticed. 

As he looked down and kissed the sweaty temple of the vision that was curled against his chest, he knew he’d never fight any other battle for any other reason than her and the family she was making him. No crown, no castle, no vassal would ever command him again – he had bigger concerns. His hands slid along Sansa’s side and down her front. She shifted, allowing him the space to splay both his hands over the small swell of their child, the tips of his fingers touching. He still wasn’t fully used to the fact that there was a babe in there and even less used to the fact that it was his. 

He hoped it had red hair, like his wife. 

He hoped it had blue eyes, like his Queen. 

He could see a tough toddler with bright red hair, demanding to controls Stranger’s reigns from his lap. He envisioned a flash of red as he chased a shrieking little girl through long stone corridors. He remembered a soldier he’d seen upon returning to King’s Landing with the Baratheon army – a small girl fanning her small fingers over her father’s cheeks and forcing him to kiss her, much like his Little Bird did to him now. The side of his mouth that didn’t twitch when forced to smile curved up. 

Eventually, they were lulling themselves to sleep with slow, drowsy fingers tracing meandering patterns on the others’ skin, listening to their ever deepening and evening breathing. Under the furs, their bodies formed a protective shell around their future, with Sandor’s hands firmly affixed to her belly.

“Sansa,” He rumbled as he nuzzled at her forehead and temple. She moaned faintly and shifted against him before her sleep-laden voice croaked, “Wh’s’at?” 

Sandor gently rubbed her belly, feeling her soft skin under his fingers as he smirked to himself. 

“It’s a girl,” He declared. 

Her eyes didn’t open, however, a sly smile bled across her mouth at his words.

“Boy,” She whispered back and he made a noise of disagreement as his eyes floated closed. 

“Girl."

“Boy.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> IT'S OVER MR. FRODO! hi family! 
> 
> \- my husband has pneumonia so unfortunately taking care of him took precedence over finishing my WIP but we all have crosses to bear  
\- i'm too machiavellian for a birth story so if that's your jam, many sorries.  
\- this is peak fluff for me so I hope you enjoyed it because if I didn't do it well enough I don't know what to tell you.  
\- i'm not gonna argue with anyone on the logistics or morals of sansa having a two sips of wine while pregnant  
\- sorry if you don't like sandor pov but I liked it for the final smut  
\- a goodbye to jon doesn't work with how much i'd have to make Sansa sad so to keep in the happy ending theme, we're skipping the goodbye scene (sorry)  
\- let's be real, it's probably a boy  
\- i'm still saying fuck the police and relying on my own editing so feel free to point out my fatal mistakes and unreadable errors
> 
> thank you all for reading along with me and putting up with my bullshit post schedule. I love you all and appreciate you dearly! I've really enjoyed seeing the same names on comments that have come from broken in, master and commander and knifepoint. to everyone new - if this is your first story, welcome. you're all mighty fine folk and I've really loved getting to know you via your reviews, so hopefully this didn't do you dirty. 
> 
> alright, until next time. :)


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